(no subject)

[principals]

Who: All y'all
When: Day 1 – Morning
Where: Everywhere
What: School is in

[Somewhere, a bell begins to ring. You may know the type—obnoxious and loud, signalling the start of a brand new day of lectures and learning. Rise and shine, lovelies; wakey wakey eggs and bakey! And with that, just as the toll falls silent, you hear the sound you may have been waiting for: the click of a lock.

You're free to explore.]

Comments

[experiencepoints]

Kyriakos. I don't know if that's the name of the castle, or the weird space it's in, but.

[carptricks]

[Sabra. Aather. The Library. Kyriakos. Just how many places was he going to wind up. . .]

I'm from Aather. And a place called the library. It never really had a name.

[Gives her a tired shrug]

[experiencepoints]

From what I've heard, just call it Bullshit.

[carptricks]

Heard?

Who told you about the library?

[experiencepoints]

... I know her as Belt. You know her as Macaron.

[carptricks]

. . . why is Macaron in Ky--





You know what? Nevermind, I don't want to know why.

[experiencepoints]

Same as everyone else. Her world got destroyed.

[carptricks]

[record scratch. suddenly she has his full attention]

-- destroyed by what?

[experiencepoints]

How many times am I going to have to explain this today...

Monsters called Reapers. They destroy worlds. People get unmade, except some don't and just have their souls shattered into a zillion pieces, one piece gets brought to that castle so we can play games and try to rebuild ourselves, that's Kyriakos.

[carptricks]

[Reapers. . . not the darkness. But still, he knows other worlds all had different names for it, so he has to ask]

Who are the Reapers?

[experiencepoints]

Monsters. That's all I know.

[carptricks]

Monsters made of darkness?

[experiencepoints]

Is there a part of "that's all I know" that was unclear? I don't remember, on account of dying with my world and then my soul getting broken and losing all my memories.

[carptricks]

. . .

It's just familiar, that's all.

[experiencepoints]

... Familiar, but you don't know Tiamat?

[carptricks]

[Shakes his head]

No. I don't.

In Aather, we were fighting against a world-destroying force we only knew as the darkness. Each game we played in produced power to push it back.

[experiencepoints]

... Tell me about the darkness, then.

[carptricks]

[Pinches the bridge of his nose for a moment, before he responds]

. . . it's nebulous, and adaptable. It sucks the life, color, and personality out of everything it touches. It leaves things gray and cold and emotionless.

It's contagious too, moving from world to world. Beauty-- one of the Personae in Aather-- had to cast a spell to stop it in its tracks in Aather. But in order to do that, she had to bind herself and the other citizens of her world to the restrictive roles of storybook characters. She had to take away her. . . and everyone else's. . . free will and ability to choose. It left them defenseless against the darkness, even if it bound it to a single world rather than spreading everywhere it can.

The darkness can take take the form of monsters, which we can fight hand to hand, but it can also take a more intangible form. Emotions, impulses, dark thoughts. . . stuff like that. It's greatest weaknesses is the power of choice, free will. . . and the bonds of those you care about most.

That's why the Personae need us to fight it. They can't choose, so they can't fight. We can.

[experiencepoints]

If it leaves something behind, then it's not our reaper things.

[carptricks]

. . . it leaves nothing behind. That's the point.

[experiencepoints]

"Gray and cold and emotionless" is still something.

[carptricks]

Figure of speech. The point was that the darkness turned everything it touched into a huge void of. . . nothingness.

[experiencepoints]

... That does sound like ours.