usir | Event #2: The Long Night

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🜙 Event Post #2: The Long Night, December 28th to January 5th Warning: Death and violence

	Nervous, frightened whispers spread across Idan. By word of mouth and courier, warnings that the Long Night has nearly arrived are sent out. Anasta's Shadow, the planet whose orbit lies between this one and its sun, will share a path with this planet for one week before they go their separate ways once more. During that time the far larger planet obscures the light and warmth the sun provides this world. This is nothing new to you. It has happened every year at this time since your birth and although the cold is treacherous and the dark inconvenient, in your time those were likely the only major threats you faced during the Long Night. The great dragon bonfires had always been kept lit by the trio of dragon guardians, their light and warmth keeping away the deadly freeze and the other horrors rumored to come with the darkness. Perhaps you remember the tales from your childhood, stories meant to scare children away from venturing too far on their own in the treacherous heart of winter. The long, cold week of darkness was likely filled with stories of people whisked away in the black cold, either never to be seen again or to be found mangled and frozen with looks of terror and agony forever etched on their lifeless faces. With the dragons ever present in your lifetime, you had never experienced the true horrors of the Long Night for yourself, even if you had witnessed a taste out in the world beyond the safety of the kingdom cities and villages. The true terror of the Long Night had not been experienced in full since the formation of the Elf-Dragon Alliance, many generations before your birth. The massive bonfires kept ever burning by the guardian dragons kept the towns and cities across all three kingdoms protected from the sheer dark and the deadly deep freeze of the week-long total eclipse. Now that the dragons are gone there is simply not enough magic to create the powerful, lasting bonfires that once sheltered the three kingdoms and kept out the dark and the worst of the cold. From the warmth and safety of a hearth, it is easy to dismiss the frightened whispers of Idan's current population as superstition, at least until the sun 'sets' on the night of the 27th, swallowed behind the looming shadow of the larger planet. As night approaches on the 27th, the world goes red. Only slivers of sunlight escape around the far edge of Anasta's Shadow, bathing the world in an eerie crimson until the planet's massive shape in the sky blocks out the sun entirely, plunging Idan into near complete shadow. With the light consumed, the shrieks and howls begin. Starting up like the roar of an angry wind, they grow louder and more twisted the closer they come. Within hours the howls and shrieks are mixed with a sound like metal grinding across glass. Windows are covered in sheets of cracked and spidered ice. Chimneys without lit fires begin to fill with screeching, clawing noises and an unsettling and unfamiliar clicking noise that rises and falls like an unknown language. The sounds outside begin to shift and change, as more human shrieks join the unsettlingly monstrous ones, and the crying sob of a young child, hiccuping in fear, breaks up the brief moments of silence. It's just beyond the door, or just out of sight beside the window, then silence, and the howling and scraping start anew. Now and then an eerie red glow shines through ever more solid ice caking the windows, and they briefly steam up as something living exhales a heated breath against the pane. Citizens within earshot or courier distance warn those who seek answers to stay away and avoid seeking out the source of the sounds. They caution that the answers are not worth the risks and warn that anyone outside cannot be saved. If they're out there, they're already dead. If you insist on going, they'll tell you not to leave the safety of hearth and fire without a torch in hand or your chances of surviving will drop from slim to none. Pay heed to the cautions of those more experienced than you in this new horror or you will not survive the long, harsh night and the ever more unsettling noises it brings.
🜙 Weather

	The cold fluctuates between -18 to -32C (0 to -25F) during the Long Night. At these temperatures, the risk of frostbite and hypothermia are greatly increased and without proper precautions, a person could experience frostbite in 10-30 minutes when exposed to the elements. In addition to this, wind, sleet, and snow periodically drop the temperatures further. The weather may be the least of your worries, however, as the cold is far from the most dangerous threat the Long Night brings with it.
🜙 Creatures

	The creatures that emerge during the Long Night are nearly all horrors rarely or never seen beyond this week of frozen darkness. The only exceptions to this are the Tundra Manticore and the Greater Bearbat which can be rarely found living in the highest points of the mountain caves and peaks where the weather remains icy year-long. Tundra Manticore: They share little in common with their lower mountain counterparts beyond their violent disposition. Their bodies glow from within due to the venom stored in their abdomen. They can secrete this deadly venom from their mouths or their barbed tails. The venom is said to burn like liquid fire and causes severe burns on contact. They live only in the coldest parts of Idan due to the significant heat generated by their venom that would cook them from the inside out in warmer climates. They consume ice and snow to maintain an internal temperature balance and if that balance is thrown off the combustible venom within them causes them to burst into flames. As a result, they are terrified of fire. They are silent stalkers and lone hunters. Greater Bearbat: Greater Bearbats are sound-based hunters that descend from their mountain homes, attracted by the shrieks of the shade imps. They are indiscriminate hunters, content to eat wayward travelers or other monsters without concern for what prey they catch in their long claws. They run on four limbs while hunting and will rarely take to the skies unless in pursuit of flying prey. Sound and heat deter them and light will blind them. Shade Imps: Seekers and servants of the Darkener, these monstrous shade imps can take a multitude of forms (Crawlers, Scouts, & Hounds) and shift between them at will. They are completely blind and travel as silent as the shadows they melt in and out of. They hunt through scent, sound, and taste, searching for traces of blood and fear on the air. When they aren't hunting, they communicate with other imps via ear-piercing shrieks or gut-churning howls, going silent only when they locate their prey. Their silence is more dangerous than the sounds they make. They recoil from fire but grow increasingly more determined the longer they are kept at bay, eventually overcoming their fear and attacking the source of the fire to attempt to extinguish it at the cost of their own lives. When fire touches them they go up in a puff of black smoke and a scream. Darkling: No one knows what darklings look like. They are the lost spirits of elementals consumed and controlled by the Darkener. They have no physical form and can control and manipulate shadows and sound. They mimic sounds to trick people into opening their homes or venturing out of safety and can perfectly replicate any sound they have heard, even capturing the voices of people speaking on the other side of walls. Their goal is to lure or force people out into the darkness where the Darkener can find them. They can be disrupted with light. Bayobat: Swarms of flying bat-like insects summoned by the Darkener. They have sharp, metal proboscises they use to pierce victims before consuming their blood. They are blind and seek out warm-blooded bodies to launch themselves at. Their screeches are metallic and mixed with insectoid clicking. Their bodies are sharp and metallic but their mouths are vulnerable. Their tails are lined with tiny, sharp spikes similar to barbed wire. They fear fire. The Darkener: An ancient being that is thought to come from the Outer Realm. The Darkener consumes flames with a touch, transforming them into shadow flames that burn black, giving off no heat or warmth. It possesses long-forgotten magic. Few have seen more than a glimpse. It causes temporary blindness in all who witness it, their eyes turning black with trapped shadows. Its image lingers in the mind, causing hallucinations. Those who witness it are often driven mad, growing increasingly certain the Darkener is watching them from the corner of their vision. It can be struck but doing so only causes darkness to erupt from the wound, consuming the Darkener and everything around it. There is only one Darkener.

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1. wee hours before dec 28

Murmurs of the Long Night reach her before the threat of Anasta's Shadow will. Having just settled in the Immortal Duke after forging an agreement with its innkeeper, Dany finds herself out hunting in those last few hours before the lands turn red. It's not her favorite thing to do, but better to do that than fend for herself out in the cold.

Irriella, her red panda, trots ahead, snout raised high in pride... and Dany? She's got a few rabbits hanging off her whilst she struggles to drag a doe by its ankles.

"What good are you if you gloat, Irriella? Come here and help me."

Sorry ser or lady, but that goofy ball of fur is going to spin around and run straight into your ankles.

2. dec 28

That was then, and now, hours later, she finds herself sitting by the fireplace in the common room of the inn. There are others scattered about. Some startle when a scratch echoes nearby; others tense when a howl grows louder.

When someone screams, she looks up. Irriella has burrowed herself beneath Dany's cloak, only her snout sticking out; she's trembling. For good reason, seeing as there's some strange red glow on the other side of a frosted window.

"Do you see that?" she asks you, "It--it looks like something's outside."

3. dec 31

( a. no dying )
Her agitation grows with the passage of time. Days seem to creep along beside the nights with no way to pick either apart save the body's habit of settling. It's all a long, tedious, reddened haze, really. Maddening, she'd venture so far to say.

When the firewood threatens to grow sparse yet again, it's she who volunteers to fetch more today. And you? You happen to be her lucky partner in this trip. If you're bigger, you're on wood duty whilst she carries the torch, her fingers twitching as if waiting to pull an invisible trigger.

"I don't recall it ever being this bad before."

( b. heroic death option )
Stay out too long, and the screams will give chase. She notices movement beyond her torch, the skittering of footsteps, a heavy panting. "Best to move," she murmurs under her breath, "We're not alone."

No, they're not. For as soon as she says it, there's the cry of a child. The sound has her freezing to the spot, glancing back over her shoulder before, experimentally, she conjures an apple-sized ball of fire. It's tossed a few feet away. A test.

4. Wildcard
Come at me!

Edited 2018-12-31 23:11 (UTC)

Awakening is not... easy. It hurts, feeling like bones, skin, muscle--every bit and piece of her body--stitches itself back together from nothingness. It hurts more than the spear when it pierced her belly, twisting, felling her in battle. Not nearly as painful as listening to her friends being slaughtered, or lying in a puddle of blood, staring blankly up at the sky, wondering if her love managed to survive. All these memories and sensations return, but she's alone. So she leaves for shelter. It's not fleeing. Not really.

Only... she returns within a day's time. And when she returns, it's to find herself a strange green-gold device and a new companion. A cute little bear-like creature who insistently snuggles against her breast. Not long after, her courier growls out a warning: You are not safe here from the bite of night. Make haste child, and take with you a burning light. Fair enough a warning she thinks.

"Time to go home, Irriella." The red panda snorts in agreement.

***

Home, of course, is a debatable thing. Having been raised in Krimnos would mean it is home, no? But that's not the city which sings to her, and it's much further away from her position. ...From where she'd died. Atrómitos, for however distant a place it is to her, still rings as the home she deserves.

The city, however, is far different from her memories. Decimated, that's how it looks. But what could have caused this sort of destruction of a once proud city?

Something to mull upon later; murmurs of the Long Night reach her before the threat of Anasta's Shadow will as she steps onto the land. Home.

***

The Immortal Duke is a rather strange establishment. No, that's not true. What's strange are those who reside within the city. The City of the Free Peoples, they call it. Free. Is she free?

She's wondering that very question when Irriella squirms her way out of Dany's hold and slips to the floor. For such a small creature, she can move quickly. "Irriella!"

Around a table. Ducking beneath a chair. Her hurried footsteps echo as she gives chase to a striped poof of fur, only to find the panda cozying herself up to a man's booted foot. She doesn't spare him a glance, merely sweeps the troublesome critter up in her arms--much to Irriella's distress, as she's yowling in displeasure--and muttering a quick, "My apologies, ser, she's unused to another's company," before spinning around and rushing her way back to the innkeep.

He doesn't like this inn, and he doesn't feel that he should be in it. Still, it's close enough to what used to be Atromitos, and that's where he is right now. Didymos is like a raw wound: he doesn't want to touch too close on it.

It's not the only thing he doesn't want to touch too close on.

A few weeks of this new life have passed, and he's spent them mostly trying to be helpful to people. He can't really think of any other reason why he should be alive again. Before he fell in the wars, he had become used to his grief for his family, but Daenerys... that grief is fresh. Whether or not she survived the wars, whether or not she married someone else eventually, she must be gone by now. He's seen no sign of her, heard no word. Being dragged back to a life without her in it feels almost exactly as it would have if she had been the one who died. It's the fourth week without her. Every day, he feels more hollow. A day will come when that won't be true, but for now, it is.

So now, he sits in this inn with a cup of cheap ale, near enough to the fire, his bowl of stew eaten, Ghost sitting quietly at his feet.

A number of things happen at once, disrupting his unhappy reverie. Ghost raises his white furred head and looks in the direction of a creature that rushes up and leans against Jon's foot. A woman darts up beside Jon, mutters a quick apology, scoops the little thing up in her arms without looking at him, and begins to rush away.

But he sees her hair, the hair that has been causing him to look twice at every pale head he passes in case it's her. And he hears her voice, so well-beloved: he's always thought there was music in it.

Before disbelief can cause him to second-guess what he thinks he's seen, he calls after her, voice choked and helpless, "Dany?"

If it isn't her, the gods are crueller than even he could have known.

Edited 2019-01-01 00:14 (UTC)

Dany.

Daintily pointed ears twitch, straining to pick out that voice above the din. Her steps have slowed to a stop before she realizes, head tilting just slightly. Dany, he'd said. That voice is familiar, like a tickle to the back of the mind, something she'd never in all her life ever forget. She'd happily drown in a sea of his words, if it meant hearing him until the end of her days.

Irriella's looking up at her with large eyes. Knowing eyes. When she squirms again, Dany doesn't stop the panda from vaulting from her hold, skittering around her feet, and scrambling up Jon's leg. She turns at watches. Meets his gaze seconds later, staring at him and wondering if this is nothing more than a dream.

Don't wake me if it is.

"Jon." Irriella's trying to press against his chest, making happy chirping sounds. She swallows past the lump in her throat, nose suddenly tingling. "Jon."

Her breath comes out of her in a sharp exhale, and she's quick to bridge that distance between them.

He's to his feet at once, not caring that the little creature is crawling up his legs and tunic, understanding innately why Ghost didn't bare his teeth at the thing. He catches it in his arms when the opportune moment comes, but his eyes are on Daenerys the whole time. He stares at her as if she's not real as she rushes up to him, and he takes a few steps closer to her. And then he's setting the thing on the table, and Ghost is standing up to look at Daenerys, and trying to jump on her skirts.

The moment Jon's hands are free and she's close enough, he frames her face with his hands.

"I thought you were dead." The words pour out of him. "I thought I would never see you again. I thought -- I've looked for you in every corner, on every street I've -- "

He interrupts himself to try to kiss her, without having made any real decision to do so.

She doesn't get the chance to vault herself into his arms like she wishes; Irriella was the closest to accomplish that for all the good it did her. The panda whines, but she ignores the sound, her arms tight around Jon's middle to keep him as close to her as possible.

Then his hands are cradling her cheeks. He's talking. Telling her of how he searched for her--how long? How long did he look? And before she can ask, before the wetness in her eyes can roll down her cheeks, he's kissing her. She doesn't notice the paws on her skirts after that. Doesn't notice much of anything when home is in her arms, the softness of him against her lips.

"You're all right," she manages to choke out on a laugh. Soon enough her cheeks and his hands will be damp, another thing ignored as she reaches up to trace his brow, his cheek, the outline of his lips, re-committing every part of his face to memory. "I'm not dead--not anymore."

He remembers a night, not too long ago for either of them, when she slept against his chest while he lay staring into the darkness, wishing the war couldn't touch her, wishing they could live in a world without it. Maybe one where Logistykon's way reigned.

There is fighting in the world now, but not like the madness there was back then.

Her tears make his fingers damp, then his lips, but he can't stop kissing her. His arms go around her, which causes the creature -- what had she called it, Irriella? -- to seek greener pastures.

"How long have you been -- " He stops himself from saying alive. "In the city?"

(Greener pastures means trying to settle on the next best thing: a white wolf.)

Her arms wind around his neck and she's returning those kisses with just as much eagerness. A burning need, really, far worse than any flame she's conjured. She doesn't think about the past, then--he banishes every thought she has. The threat of the Long Night, the wandering aimlessness she's dealt with the last two days, why she's returned, and how he's here.

"Today. We arrived a few hours ago." She stops kissing him long enough to meet his eyes. Her lashes and cheeks remain damp, but at least there aren't any tears. "What are you doing here? How long have you--"

And now her brows furrow. How is he here?

"A few weeks, in this city and other places." Then, he drops the volume of his voice and murmurs into her ear, "You came from the marsh flats? I did too."

He's spent so much time these last weeks thinking she was dead and hoping against hope that she wasn't that the confirmation that she was -- the presence of the little creature, too -- both bothers him and doesn't. What did she suffer after he fell?

She doesn't seem to realize that he fell. Didn't she see it happen?

"I thought -- you must have lived out your life, that maybe you had married someone else. But if you woke up there, then -- "

Meanwhile, Ghost is sniffing the little red panda again, and takes a playful stance, as if he's likely to pounce.

Irriella lifts her paws with a squeak, slapping them on the floor before she somersaults closer to the wolf. Her striped tail thumps on the floor.

Her ear twitches again, his breath a warm gust of air against it. She gives one sharp nod in answer. Yes, the marsh flats. But that means if he came from there, if he has his own companion like she does...

Dany leans back, half incredulous, half pained as her mind flits back to those last moments of her life.

"Even if I did, you expected me to marry someone else?" She shakes her head, affectionately exasperated, now. An arm drops from around his neck as she reaches between them and into her cloak, pulling out the strange courier. "Do you have this, as well?"

Are we the same? is what she wants to know.

He nods quickly, looking as pained as she does.

"I didn't want you to, I just -- I thought maybe you survived it all, and that you found some way to be happy. I couldn't have hoped for anything else. But without seeing you, there was no way to be sure."

Now, here she is, in his arms. There is no reason to mourn her anymore. It's a habit he's developed that he'll have to break.

"And aye, I have it. Strange messages now and then."

With him here, it seems unnecessary to speak of those last few moments in an old and clearly dead war. Did he fall in the charge? Was he able to escape, only to fall in another battle?

"I was only ever happy with you." A soft, gentle chide, gentled further by another kiss. It's hesitation which stays her words, has her considering them so carefully. "We didn't make it far."

She might've died before he did. Who would know?

"Strange messages?" She fingers hers, considering it, then tucks it away. "Mine gave me a warning."

That gets him nodding again, looking terribly apologetic. There is such joy in seeing her that it's almost heartbreaking in itself. These weeks, he hasn't been able to make much sense of why he was back, who would want him, what his greater purpose might be. He has been grateful to be alive, but doubtful that he should be.

The idea that it's another chance for them hits him like a cavalry charge.

He says into her ear, "Messages from Logistykon for some, Epithimetykon for others. Mayhap Thymoeides, too, but I can't be sure. Speaking of the truth, of answers. But people say they're long dead."

Before letting her respond, he pulls back, looks at her, and falls to kissing her again.

"Do you have a room? We should go to it, or to mine."

daenerys | city of the free

FOR JON;

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Wee Hours

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