July Test Drive Meme!

[reddosmod]

JULY 2022 TDM

Another month, another test drive meme! Our test drive memes are open to anyone interested - regardless of whether or not you join our game!

All Test Drive Memes are game canon. Players can choose to keep their TDM threads canon or not. TDM threads can be used for AC and can be used as your writing sample for your application.

Our TDMs serve as a way to build into the actual lore and worldbuilding of Deer Country and we strongly encourage everyone to enjoy and participate! Current players are always welcome to pull prompts from the TDM to reference on the Network or bring into logs as well as tag out to new characters top-leveling on the TDM itself.

Characters will always be able to actively die during TDMs as this is an extremely dangerous world. You can still have this be game canon! Check out how character death in Deer Country works here.

If you have any questions about the TDM, please ask down below!

IMAGE DESCRIPTORS IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE
Prompt One
[Image One: Colorful paper lanterns shaped like jellyfish lit up and hovering in the air. ]
[Image Two: A person with long hair wearing a crown dedicated with shells and rocks. ]

Prompt Two
[Image One: A GIF of waves breaking roughly out in the middle of the ocean. ]
[Image Two: Strong waves crashing into a lighthouse and rocks. ]

Prompt Three
[Image One: A large Ningen (a sea creature that is half human, half monster, and has no face except for a large slit for a mouth) towering over a deep sea diver. ]
[Image Two: A person standing out on the rocks with their arms out stretched as the tentacles of a large sea monster wave in the air above the ocean. ]

[NAVIGATION]

TDM Questions • Reserves • Taken • Applications • Full Navigation

[Jump to Comments]

STANDARD ARRIVAL

WHEN: August
WHERE: The Farther Shores/The Boardwalk
CONTENT WARNINGS: N/A

---

You're one of the lucky ones. Your journey is smooth sailing and you wind up exactly where you're supposed to: on the Farther Shores. You grow out of your squid body without a hitch, either with the help of another Sleeper or one of the Wakers, and you get to discover this new world. All new Sleepers might take some time to find their bearings. It might be tricky to remember how to use your body parts the way you're supposed to. You might stumble around the beach or forget how to talk - but don't worry! It'll come back to you sooner or later.

Hopefully, you've found something to wear, either in your Welcoming Bag or otherwise, and can start familiarizing yourself with your surroundings. Maybe you help some other squids out on the beach. Waking up sucks! You feel for the little guys. And hey, maybe you're hoping one of those squids is a good friend...Stranger things have happened.

SEASONAL DETAILS ON THE BOARDWALK
This month has an entire festival dedicated to Mariana. The people of Trench seem to be quite enamoured with her, despite her often cruel and unpredictable behaviors. The festival has gone all out with decorations. The boardwalk will be lined with lanterns in the shape of various sea creatures, such as jellyfish, dolphins, seahorses, and (of course) squids! These lanterns will be lit every night throughout the month and will burn through the night. They are bright beacons to a month that is otherwise becoming more and more gray and chilly as time passes.

The people of Trench are also decked out for the occasion. Blues and greens are the popular color choices for outfits, and many people will even decorate their hair with pieces from the ocean. Whether it's with full headpieces that are worthy enough for mermaids or just something as simple as weaving shells into a braid, everyone seems to have something on them that ties them to the sea. There are stalls set up to help newcomers (or oldies who just want to have some fun) decorate their hair as well and face paint for those who want to go the extra mile.

The festival comes with all sorts of celebrations that can be partaken in at absolutely no cost. There are food vendors, though they seem to be short on seafood this month. Likely it's due to the rough seas with waves so treacherous that not even the most skilled of sailors seems to be able to get out into them. They'll remark on how difficult is must have been to swim to shore in those awful waves. So instead of fish and shrimp, there are other sea-dedicated dishes: seaweed salad, noodle dishes made with seaweed broth, caramelized chicken in a fish and ginger sauce, etc. There are also ocean themed desserts, such as cupcakes with blue frosting shaped to look like a great wave. There are games such as dunk tanks, dart balloons, ring tosses, and other typical carnival entertainment. If you can think of it, it's probably there. At the end of the night, there's often a fireworks display over the rolling waves.

[JUMP TO TOP] • [JUMP TO COMMENTS]

rough seas and high winds

WHEN: Last Week of July, First Week of AugustT
WHERE: Beach and Nearby Oceans
CONTENT WARNINGS: Threat of drowning, severe weather phenomena, Environmental hazards, possible death

---

For some reason, Mariana is particularly wrathful even as the month begins. Even leaking into the end of the month of July, the sea begins to foam and rage in ways that are almost impossible to imagine. As you stare out int the beachheads, you may see vast waves and surf that would daunt the most professional of surfers. Water crashes into each other in colossal spouts. Waterspouts can be seen as storms occasionally buffet the coastline and just out into the ocean itself. However, the one thing about this chaotic energy is that it is just that, chaotic. One moment the sea may be calm, and the next it is a roiling, seething force out to destroy everyone.

This is, naturally, dangerous for those who are just hapless squids trying to reach shore. They may find themselves inexorably being flung towards sharp rocks and shoals, threatened with being dashed upon the stone near to the coast, or they may find themselves constantly swirling in eddies and whirlpools to the point of near exhaustion. However, they are not the only ones so threatened. Even those on the coast are in near constant danger of being washed right back out to see by an unexpected wave and sudden rip-tide. There are wood planks and other detritus to grab hold of, but it is very much a battle for one's life out there!

The sea's rage, the locals say, is because Mariana is particularly incensed over something that occurred. They do not know what exactly, but many have said that sleepers have felt a particular brunt of this ire lately. For now, it is a game of survival and a constant battle to bring people in safely.

Notes:
-Any natural weather occurrence is possible in the first week of August and last of July. Seemingly impossible combinations may occur (A waterspout in the middle of the eye of a hurricane, almost anything.
-These threats will be upon anyone who is not far enough inland to enjoy the festivities. The beach is not truly safe and sleepers are hustled inland quickly.
-Death is possible, though sleepers who die in the ocean find themselves returning very quickly as squids for some reason, within 24 hours, only to be threatened again before they eventually find shore.

[JUMP TO TOP] • [JUMP TO COMMENTS]

of monsters in the water

WHEN: Throughout August
WHERE: The coast and waterways
CONTENT WARNINGS: Monster Horror, Possibly Getting Eaten, Threat of bodily harm, Unnatural Physiology, Existential Dread

---

Something has been dredged up from the deep by the storms that rage. It is said that Mariana not only presides over the oceans, but also the most powerful monsters that dwell within the deep. Some of these, it is believed, may be the remains of Pthumerians whose minds and lives were lost during the hard times before, or the spawn of their mating with things other than humans. Whether these rumors are true, eldritch things have begun to emerge from the depths and darkness, things best left unseen.

Throughout the month of August, it is possible to encounter creatures that can only be described as monsters emerging from the water. With every passing storm, another emerges. Some are as large as small kaiju, while others are closer to human size, and each shares very little in common with the others, save for two particular details. The first of these is that they are all aquatic in nature and bear at least a passing similarity to sea monsters of ancient legend or particularly large and dangerous aquatic animals. Giant cuttlefish, Megalodons, Plesiosaurs, Octopi, Sea Cucumbers, Whales, or any of a number of other sea creatures appear to be their basis. The other similarity, however, is that all are hideously and grotesquely deformed. Tentacles, second rows of teeth, great clawed hands and feet enabling them to walk on dry ground, a thousand eyes all over the hump of a hunchback whale all shooting laser beams in the full moon, almost anything seems to be possible, though the changes are all chtonically horrendous in nature.

These creatures are violent, dangerous, and horrifying to behold. Just looking at them jars the mind and threatens to damage one's psyche while they try to understand what they are seeing. Bones are in seemingly impossible angles, bodies moving in ways that they shouldn't. Just looking at them can cause nausea, vertigo or mental breaks, though the danger does not stop there. They are agents of chaos, seeking to destroy mind or body, on a rampage whenever they reach ground, though they do not delve far into Trench beyond the waterways and beach, almost as if they are prevented by something. When one strays too close, an ominous light glows from the tops of the tallest spires in the city and they are inevitably repelled, but until they are killed or sent back to the deep from whence they came, they remain a threat outside of the city.

[JUMP TO TOP]

CODING

Comments

Mercymorn the First | The Locked Tomb | Vileblood

[acidjail]

i. rough seas and high winds
[cw: blood, gore, body horror, transformation, nudity]

Far down the shore from the boardwalk, wind-whipped waves shatter on outcropping of razor-edged, porous grey rock. They seethe with wreckage swept back to shore by the ocean, as if she seeks to vomit back the refuse of the land. Old fishing nets, splintered planks, the tattered remnants of cargo - these and more are tossed on the rocks and dragged over cutting stone.

Inside one such wave, a flash of pink shines in the low light of the predawn horizon, tumbled by the waters. It could be any bright bit of flotsam, except that as the crest of the wave falls, two fleshy, barbed tentacles shoot out of the water, lengthening impossibly to hook onto a ledge just before the wave collapses. When it draws back out to sea, it leaves behind a swollen amniotic sac that clings to the pitted rock beneath it with a dozen more anchoring tentacles as something squirms violently within it.

As soon as this canker is expelled, the violence of the sea begins to subside, though the wind still races across the shore.

The sac convulses, the shape inside it twisting, and then it ruptures in a fountain of gore that punches up towards the sky and falls in a green hued rain of Vileblood, drenching anything unfortunate enough to be nearby, especially the sodden human body that sits bolt upright in the deflating blister. It stares out wildly towards the first gentle blush of a new morning on an old world.

The Saint of Joy fills her trembling new lungs, and screams.

ii. of monsters in the water
[cw: blood, gore, body horror, psychological horror, mutation, monsters, vomiting]

Somewhere on the shore, you are beset by a monster.

Perhaps it is a shelled titan whose carapace spews stinging tendrils as it trundles up the sand, or a winding eyeless eel with six tiered jaws that lunges for you, or an undulating translucent sea slug that vomits black acid at anything within reach of its slow moving autonomous gut. It could be anything. It might well be anything, the next time you look at it.

It doesn't matter what it is, or how it towers. As it menaces its chosen prey, a torrent of pinkish, frothing liquid blasts into it from the side, reeking of bile and rotten flowers. Whatever flesh it touches scalds, and the slight, small figure behind the point this noxious stream flows from laughs in a glass cutting mad peel, her green-stained hair tacked wetly around her too-wide eyes.

Alas: your salvation is at hand.

iii. wildcard
[Contact me at terriblepurpose if you'd like to discuss another starter. Permissions for this character can be found here.]

i

[loopsbian]

[ for the most part, satoko has grown used to this place's horrors, completely inured to this world of blood and beasts and sickness. this, however? this is something completely different. new, intriguing, disgusting on a level satoko has never seen in a life filled with death.

of course she watches. this is the first truly entertaining thing that's happened in months - entertaining to her tastes, at least. she'd die before she missed something as novel as this.

when the woman hatches out, satoko gives her a moment to recuperate - and then startles, just for a moment, at her lemongrab ghastly wailing. still, she recovers admirably quickly, shaking her head and taking a step back to ignore the brunt of the vileblood explosion. (she'd rather not have to clean herself off right now, after all - and blood can be such a pain to get out of clothing.) ]

Goodness, that's a dramatic entrance! [ she honestly sounds mildly impressed more than anything. ] Well, go on, then. Get it out of your system.

cw: self-harm, ongoing gore, body horror, bodily fluids

[acidjail]

[The gore-slick woman cuts her wail short with an abrupt click of her teeth and twist to stare agog at this little apparition of the River, who shines like a dark beacon of thanergy in Joy’s unwilling sight. She blinks once, then once again, and her face screws up in a hot, seething misery of devastation.

She looks back out at the frothing ocean. She takes a heroic inhale, her whole body heaving with it, and the most Holy Hand of the Necrolord Prime throws an absolute fit.

She throws back her head and wails like something gutted. She slaps at the sagging sides of her vessel of transformation with her hands like a child in a mud pit, sending sticky spurts of unmentionable commingled fluids in wild arcs, kicking her heels at the shroud around her legs and the rocks beneath it. She doubles over and rips it apart with her fingernails, casts shreds of it aside to reveal herself as naked as the day she was Resurrected, still screaming and screaming, a raw animal howl.

Everything soft that isn’t her torn asunder, she digs her fingers into her hair and starts to pull, her mouth stretched wide enough that she can feel the thin skin of her lips at the corners split, and it’s not enough, it’s never going to be enough - and a stream of smoke pours from above her still hideously beating heart, a pink cloud that coalesces into a diaphanous flutter of wings.

A perfect pink butterfly lands on the tip of Joy’s nose, and the silence she fell into when the stranger addressed her is nothing compared to the silence that follows that.

She hiccups. She lifts her hand to her nose to wipe away the bubbled and trailing snot beneath it, then draws her knees up to her chest, her head very still so as not to disturb the Omen alit on it. In a querulous and extraordinarily pathetic little voice, she asks:]

And what do you want?

[loopsbian]

[ she watches the whole thing, and she doesn't say a word.

she is silent as mercymorn resumes her earlier screams. she is silent as the lyctor shrieks and pounds at the sac she was reborn in. and she is silent as mercymorn starts to tear at her hair, her face, that rictus grin splitting her lips until blood and smoke alike begin to pour forth.

she smiles the whole while, self-indulgent and cruel. finally - some worthwhile entertainment.

and when the woman finally freezes-
when her tantrum ceases, and she in turn ceases to be an avatar of fury and resumes being so meek and and quiet and almost human again-

satoko shrugs theatrically. ]

To be perfectly honest, I didn't have any plans when I came out here. You're doing more than enough for me as is, Miss.

[ it's not said quite condescendingly... but it's close enough. ]

At some point, I assume you'll want a rundown on your new homeland, yes? Consider it payment for the spectacle. I've had a simply dreadful month, you know, and it's nice to have a bit of distraction.

[acidjail]

[It has only been a handful of minutes, and Joy has already had a terrible day. She has been dragged up out of the waters. She has been a squid. She has had a tantrum that has not gotten anything out of her system. She is naked and chilled and has bits of viscera in places no viscera ought to be. She is being spoken to familiarly (Miss!) by some ghastly little shade. There is something profoundly, intimately wrong with her blood, a horrific disorder and rebellion of the cells.

She bristles visibly at the girl's intimation of payment, as if that spectacle had anything to do with her, as if she imagines she has taken some revelation from Joy that the Saint might quiver at. Her butterfly flits from her nose to perch beside her ear, a bizarre ornament on a horror like the one she is.]

I haven't the slightest interest in learning anything about this wretched brackwater.

[She pulls an exaggerated frown, nose wrinkling in disdain, and emphasizes her point with a pronounced little:] Blech.

i

[lipochrome]

[ Gideon has no idea why she's down at the beach. Maybe it's to prove that she can still show up here, to tell herself that she's not afraid of stupid shit like water or gods. At no point does she consider that she's looking for something, let alone someone. That would be stupid. Gideon has never been much of a welcome wagon.

The gross sac on the shorline is kind of neat, though. In a bad way. Gideon comes a bit closer, extremely tempted to poke it with her sword, when it bursts in a nasty rain of Vileblood. Ugh.

The screaming is bad. The woman who is doing the screaming is worse. Gideon nudges a boot-clad foot in the Lyctor's direction, hoping that it'll be enough to send her rolling back into the sea like some weird pink worm. ]

Yeah, yeah. Sure, grandma, let's get you to bed.

cw: blood, gore, body horror, all ongoing

[acidjail]

[Mercymorn's scream curdles in affronted inquisition when the boot enters the close, dense fog of outrage and steaming blood around her, jerking away from it and raising her eyes like the barrels of an antique weapon to whoever dares, and of course it's her, again, the worst coin of a bad minting.

Then her unbearable eyes meet the one set even more unbearable than they are, and a paroxysm of abject, shattered-heart fury wrecks her face like a tidal wave.]

You.

[She hisses it like a puncture wound in the hull of a submarine, perfect pressurized murder. The blood around Gideon's feet quivers, dances with oscillations, and is troubled with the thrash of unseen coils.]

Cavaliers used to stay dead.

[And a dozen whip-thin tendrils of pale, bloodless gut rocket from the pooled Vileblood, seeking Gideon's hands and forearms as confinement and anchor.]

[lipochrome]

Fucking -- get! Off! Me!

[ Gideon struggles against those guts. They're so gross. Everything about this is gross, and awful, and bad. It serves Gideon right for coming back to the sea. What did she think would happen?

The sword strapped to her back is too far out of reach, so Gideon tries to go for a smaller knife concealed at her waist, one of the many habits she's picked up from her little brothers. ]

Fuck off. You've never once checked if I was dead or not. I thought you were supposed to be thorough. [ Gideon twists, slicing through some of the flesh but missing much more of it ] But no, that stick you've got shoved so far up your ass it's coming out your throat isn't good for shit.

[ asshole!!!! ]

[acidjail]

[A new trick. It seems like the project is full of them, for all the good they'll do her. Mercymorn presses up to her feet with sinuous mustelid aggression, her feet sure on the slippery rocks, and she shows her perfect, blood-viridescent teeth in a bitter, flashing grin that vanishes into a cruel flatline smile.]

If I had known your mother dearest had gotten the brilliant idea into her thick, brutish skull to sabotage my project, I would have cratered your miserable little House from orbit myself, you puling error.

[Her eyes boil like planetary oceans hurtling towards a sun. More strings of guts weave up to join their fellows, rubbery and cold, two for every one cut.]

Where's your necromancer, infant? Or did you think to challenge the Saint of Joy alone?

i.

[underbluesky]

[Vash knows precious little about what he is; he knows that he is called a Plant, and that he is not human. He knows that Rem found him and Knives as infants and they grew to the size of young children over the course of a single year. He knows about Tesla, who came before, and what the humans did to her.

(He knows, now, that he is something capable of razing a city, a moon, a planet to the ground)

He walks by a woman sprouting fully formed from a sac, and he wonders briefly in that moment if it is anything like what Rem experienced when she found him and Knives. He finds he can't bring himself to walk away, and so. When she stops screaming, he kneels beside the sac from which she hatched, and smiles. It looks lonely, somehow.]

Are you alright?

cw: blood, gore

[acidjail]

[Joy goes as rigid and still as a corpse. She doesn't even blink, staring at the aberrant thing addressing her.]

All right?

[Terribly quiet, followed by terribly shrill, a two part note.]

All right??

[She quivers with indignation, her mouth screwed up in an ugly rolled crumple, and there is a great violence bubbling in her stormy reddish brown eyes, her breath coming in shuddering, wet sniffles. It never comes. Instead, with a shrill little cry, she folds over her knees and buries her face in her hands to sob, hatefully.]

[underbluesky]

[So, that's a no, then. Vash isn't deterred by the rage or the sobs that follow it. He does not reach out to touch, to comfort or reassure, but neither does he draw away. Instead, he sits besides the sobbing woman, and stares out into the endless expanse of the sea before them.]

I'm sorry.

[He says it softly, a whisper on the wind, and there's a odd ring of sincerity to it. As though he really is sorry that she is suffering in whatever way she is, and that he cannot help.]

[acidjail]

[If there was so much as an iota of insincerity in the creature's apology, Joy thinks she would tear him apart on the spot. She really would.

But in all her acute sensitivity, more a nerve flayed of myelin sheathing than a human being, she detects none. It wrings another rage-wracked wail out of her, her nails digging into her brow, an awful, insensible noise.]

Oh, you're sorry.

[If it wasn't so pitiful, the acid bite of her tone might actually sting, but it's exceedingly difficult to maintain one's icy reserve when one is sniveling.]

You haven't the faintest idea - the least understanding - sorry!!

1

[slightlytaller]

...He was going to be sick.

No, he was sick-- that was why he was on the beach in the first place, in hopes that the crisp salty air would help settle his nerves and his stomach. Nevermind that he also kept an eye on the shores at all times, just in case.

The screaming was new.

Heaving a sigh, Waver approached the nude woman and held out his hands. Hanging from one was a fresh cloak; from the other, a cigarette.

"Take your pick" he sighed. "I'd offer you a shot of whiskey, but we need to head inland for that."

[acidjail]

Joy shuts her mouth with a hard enamel crash, glaring up at the interloper with immediate, undifferentiated resentment. It is a pointedly unpointed irritation, a wide spectrum flare of sizzling annoyance.

She snatches at the cloak and brings it down to her face in two fistfuls, and, without so much as a by your leave, messily and bloodily blows her nose into it. She lets the rest of the cloak fall haphazard across her front, not quite hiding her heaving chest. She doesn't seem to care, because she doesn't.

"That's a disgusting habit, you know." She says, with absent meanness, looking out over the water in a squint. "Thoroughly unpleasant, and antisocial to boot."

[slightlytaller]

Another man would have found himself aroused, disgusted, or some unholy combination of both sentiments at once. Lord El Melloi II, however, regarded her with the stoic detachment of an academic-- one that was familiar enough with both blood magic and having blood puked up on his shirt to be fairly unmoved by this gross display.

He cocked his head to the side at her comment, brow lifted.

"That sounds quite like how my peers describe me," he commented. "Good."

It meant that the last decade spent cultivating his Lordly manner succeeded-- even with the rough edges of the Thames still evident in the way he spoke.

"Now, if you're quite done, I know of a place to get good tea and scones-- once you're properly clothed, of course."

He was too gay to be moved by a woman in the nude-- by others might have different ideas.

[acidjail]

At least her lower parts are mostly obscured, although the sac of tissue they're draped in is obscene in its own way, ragged edges of a torn orifice gaping wetly at the world around the horrid thing it birthed.

"Tea," Joy says, with a soft, gauzy wistfulness, blinking slowly up at the Lord El Melloi II, "And scones."

"Tea," she repeats, with a rising, perilous lilt, "And scones."

"Tea!" She reiterates, with breaking glass sharpness. "And scones?!"

"Of course! How foolish of me, how short-sighted - to think! I overlooked the curative properties of tea and scones!!" She hisses, all pretense stripped raw, her teeth gritted and fingers clawed into the balled up corner of the cloak she still holds. "That will make it all better, after all! Nothing that can't be fixed with tea! And! Scones!!"

1

[the_obedient_servant]

[They don't often walk the shores of this place. They prefer to tell themselves that there is nobody that they could look for. Nobody left, anyway.

Perhaps there's some friends they made here who they might like to see again, who are gone from this world, but currently, they are only here to beat back the tide of beasts rising from the sea. Call it public wellfare after their public statement of sacrilege.

It's a curious sight, the woman expelled onto the uneasy bank, and it's even more curious when she just starts screaming.

So Chara does the only thing they can do, the only mercy they can offer.

They start screaming as well.]

[acidjail]

[There's little outside sign that the screaming woman even notices the new voice in the choir, save a single record skip flick of her tempestuous eyes sideways, a blip that swiftly correct itself.

But her volume soars, the pitch of her wailing slanting sharply up to broken nails raked across chalkboard. She seems to barely need to breathe to keep producing this cacophony, an endless font of unsalvable agony.

You might almost think it was a competition.]

ii.

[peripheries]

cw: monsters, vomit

[It's offensive for this to happen on the shore. That's his domain. Ask anyone. Ask Mariana!

Currently, he's in the middle of stumbling away from some creature that looks like the Leviathan if it had gotten a sea slug makeover. So completely disgusting and traumatic at the same time.

Kaworu's A.T. Field is currently keeping it at bay as it lashes out with a dozens of tongues covered in sharp teeth, but the longer he stays, the more the nausea begins to twist his stomach and his head rings with sounds from thousands of worlds, brought on by this creature.

It strikes again and his A.T. Field activates, blinking like a lightbulb at the end of its life, and then vanishes. He stumbles backwards, trying to keep a distance when his eyes don't even want to focus.

He notices the smell first and wonders if he's been eaten again. Then he opens his eyes and sees the beach covered in a vile pink liquid, the creature burned and sputtering its last few breaths, and a human woman standing there looking manic.

This is where he should probably thank her. But instead, he succumbs to all the sensations around him and just doubles over and vomits instead.]

[acidjail]

[The crab-octopus does not get to breathe its last agonal air in peace. Insult to injury, its own severed tongues squirm back into the aperture they emerged from, and deeply unpleasant, wet, squelching sounds emerge from the inner curve of its steaming shell before it twitches to its final stillness.

This is where the Saint of Woe (née Joy) ought to go check on her rescued charge. Instead, she whoops in undignified, joyless victory, a gull-cry of triumph - and promptly bends at the waist to join the odd little child in puking her holy guts out in a thin, bitter stream of bile.

When she's done, she straightens up sharply, wiping her mouth with the equally filthy back of her hand and staring up the beach at the child who is not a necromancer, but summoned a ward better than any she's seen in centuries from anyone but her sibling-saints.]

It gets worse. [She calls, quite calmly.] It gets much worse.

[peripheries]

[Okay. That's weird.

Well, no first it's gross. The squelching sound turns Kaworu's stomach but there's nothing left to come back up. It's not even that it's disgusting, it's how the noise causes an unpleasant tingling sound in his ear drum that runs all the way down his body.

Then it's weird. He mimics her movement, wiping his mouth with his knuckles and then squints at her like she's blurry at the edges because he can't quite make out what the heck she's doing. Humans! Why are they like this.]

Worse? That thing almost ate me. Then I threw up. Then I had to watch you throw up. How does it get worse?

[She's the one who spewed (ugh) that stuff everywhere to get rid of the octopus-crab!!!]

[acidjail]

[The child-thing's litany of complaint is guilelessly peevish, a wet, whining little creature that might twine around ankles in search of acknowledgement. It's an absurd reaction to this, the tugging unweaving of the mind and the assaults of these horrors.

Joy stares at him with startlement. Then, with a hiccuping burst, she laughs again. It's a bizarre, bell-like sound, something about it off-kilter and incorrect.]

It keeps happening! [She shakes her head hard enough that if her hair wasn't soaked, it would fly about her face.] Oh, Lord - it keeps happening.

2 (cw gore kind of just gross shit)

[audiat]

Contrary to the belief of many who had the misfortune of meeting him Daniil Dankovsky was not a devout slave to the rigid constructs of rationality. Logic was a pillar of the mind, of course, but its malleability could not be understated and he had little time for the cage some made of it. If he sees something with his eyes, a miraculous, impossible cure or absurd magics, he can accept they are, they exist, and it is job to then untangle how.

He's never understood why that fact surprises people. A man whose lifelong ambition was to defeat death as a concept could not be bound by such inane rules.

So monsters, they are a matter he now must contend with and accept the reality of. That absurd creature in the Steppe Sticky thought a vampire, or the beasts he's only seen briefest glimpses of here. They exist, they have a purpose, they are solid and tangible and, most importantly, made to ultimately be understood, with the right effort.

Of course the moment he's faced directly with one it is a creature that shifts its own reality in what he will later consider belligerent spite. At the moment, this terrible moment where he's fallen back and grips for his gun with only six shots left, he is merely terrified.

That terror doesn't cease when the thing (like a snarling wolf until he blinks and the inky outline goes larger, bursting at the seams and writhing like maggots under the skin-) is... injured? Burst even, like abscess lanced and draining the rotting innards. He's so sick of flowers and herbs, that he manages to think as the creature starts to fall, and with it he can see the terrible face of his rescue.

The animal instinct in him is still cornered, still rushing adrenaline that says he is in just as much danger as before. "What... are you?" he asks, in the tone of a man who yes, isn't sure he isn't just facing another monster with a prettier face.

cw: blood, gore

[acidjail]

The woman shows her teeth as a wolf might, as well, tinted a bilious green by her noxious blood. She wears a torn scrap of cloth as an approximation of a dress, or holy robes, bound at shoulder and hip, and she should by all rights cut a pathetic figure. She mostly does, but there is a gravity of dignity that adheres like a scab to her bearing.

"I am the Saint of Woe," she announces, and it should be foolish, overdramatic, a bit of tragic theatre. It is all those things. It is only that it does not matter that all of that is true, when she tilts her chin and says it without irony or hesitation. She says it like it explains everything, while tendrils of flesh blossom and throttle what's left of the dying, steaming creature between them.

"What are you?"