singillatim | you can run but you can't escape

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you can run but you can't escape

THE DARKWALKER COMES

The Darkwalker strikes again. This time, it does not come for one Interloper — but four.

WHEN: March 2nd.
WHERE: Milton.
CONTENT WARNINGS: death of playable character; supernatural death; mention of dead body; themes of death; supernatural beings; themes of terror; themes of peril.

YOU CAN RUN BUT YOU CAN'T ESCAPE

The sun sets on another day in the Northern Territories. The night is calm but cold, scant clouds drifting low in the skies promising snowfall soon. A waning moon sits in the skies amongst its sea of stars, and those looking up may notice it — slowly, one by one, the stars begin to go out.

Then the moon's light is swallowed whole, and a blanket of green gloom descends upon the town of Milton. One more, the sky is dark and green and terrible. Many of those will recognise it, what this means and what will come. Others will not understand it, not know what it is that awaits them all.

They will soon find out: the Darkwalker comes.

Fear washes over you like a cold wave, a vice-tight grip that squeezes the breath from you. Interlopers will find themselves over-come, and everything in their bodies and minds tells them to run. To flee. And so you run, heading for cover indoors. Curtains will be drawn, some may hide under beds, within closets or wardrobes. Some desperate attempt to conceal themselves, make themselves small, unseen. Some Interlopers, in that fear, may rush to friends or loved ones to hide with them, others may simply cowered alone — crawling and whimpering away from the night. The fear is irrational, unable to be overcome — even by the bravest or most stoic of Interlopers.

The Darkwalker howls: indescribable, unnatural, demonic. Low moans and groans. It comes from the east, the faint booms of footsteps in the distance growing ever nearer. It is coming, once more. It's coming for one of you. And still, you are powerless, unable to do anything. And it is an agony, awaiting its arrival. You cry, you whimper, you cower. Curling up for some shred of comfort, and finding none.

The footsteps draw closer and closer, and you feel like the ground itself may be threatening splitting open beneath you. It isn't you that it hunts, but you notice its path — a straight line from the east towards Milton Church. It seems to go on forever, building into a crescendo. Your heart beats so hard you fear it may burst from your chest, as if you might die of fright.

There is an almighty sound; the Darkwalker devours and suddenly the sky is alight: streaks of pale colour shoot across the gloomy green — almost blinding for one long moment. A woman's scream fills the air and then snaps into silence.

The skies return to normal, the green is gone, the fear melts away from you. It is done.

There is no body in the street. Interlopers venturing out will need to go looking for whoever it is that's fallen victim to the Devourer. The answer will be found within Milton Church.

Towards the altar, peppered amongst faint glimmers of intangible green that will fade by morning, lie the twisted and mangled bodies of Nicholas Wolfwood, Millions Knives and both iterations of Vash the Stampede. There's no blood, no physical wounds — simply the contorted bodies that lie dropped like ragdolls. Each of their faces stare with wide eyes, frozen in horror — just as La'an Noonien-Singh was.

The Darkwalker has devoured more. There is a story, told by Methuselah: It is said that the Darkwalker will awake from its slumber and swallow the world whole. One head will swallow the stars and moon and sun. Another will swallow the seas and lakes and rivers. The third will swallow the land, and every living thing upon it — and only then will the Darkwalker be satisfied and return to sleep once more.

It feels as if the Darkwalker is making good on its story: one by one, it will devour you all whole. And now the Interlopers of Milton must grapple with more death.

FAQs

1. Essentially, a 'party post' for reactions to the Darkwalker's attack, the immediate aftermath, and any funerary preparations. Have... fun???

2. Information on the Darkwalker's attack can be found here.

3. An OOC Rundown for the original Darkwalker's attack, which includes some FAQs can be found here.

4. Notes about the characters:

Wolfwood: He doesn't leave any messages behind. Folks are welcome to go through his house, which is the cabin by the pond -- there's nothing in there of his, and the only changes he made to the house was pulling a twin bed over in front of the fireplace. The wall of the cabin is also scorched from inside, from where his Lightbringer power erupted at one point.

Vash The Stampede (Trigun Stampede): He really didn't have much belongings or anything in particular of note, so it is a free for all situation in terms of possessions.

Vash The Stampede (Trigun Maximum): He'll be leaving behind his meager belongings. all of it can be found on either his person or in the church's living quarters which is also decently stocked with foraged foods. alas he's prepared no messages because he is absolutely atrocious at saying goodbyes.

Millions Knives: He'll leave behind sharpened hunting and skinning knives (hah), some fishing equipment, and scattered feathers around the church.

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[Rorschach hung back from the four bodies. He wasn't unused to death. He'd lived with it night after night for too many years now to be completely shocked by it. The other emotions that went with seeing a bunch of bodies, however, those he could do without. Feeling a certain helplessness that this had happened again, frustration that the godlike creature who did this could not be stopped, and that sense of (undeserved) guilt that once again he'd been unable to keep the people here safe.

He was so wrapped up in his own thoughts he couldn't even muster up his usual hostility towards the Russian. He merely nodded, silent as he stood back with his hands in his pockets. However, the thoughts that raced through his head were filtering in and out like a radio signal that was too far away to fully pick up.]

....not again......and who will be next....should been able to....why does it come....can't protect anyone from anything here....

Louis felt the grip of fear during the first attack, compulsively biting into his own arm. He saw La'an's body, both as it was left and the examination afterward. He listened to Goodsir talk about cardiac arrest and Damian propose chemical testing as the body was cut up.

Tonight, while cowering in that uncontrollable fear, his fang slipped and broke the skin on his lip. The angry red welt, iced down as well as possible, glares on his face now. Louis shivers even in his wool overcoat, but otherwise keeps his face as impassive as he can make it. A crease appears between his brows.

Louis did not have the thought the first time, but he has it now: What if the howls of the monster and the screams of the woman were from the same creature? His own daughter is a devourer with the sweet face of a girl. Perhaps that influences his thinking.

"Two different points in town have been hit, to our knowledge. It comes from the east. Has anyone started markin' the path? If you draw this one and the previous one on a map, the lines may cross... eventually."

There are two things that Louis is not: good at math and willing to trek long distances while surveying. But he remembers, vaguely, doing numbers and plotting curves in school.

Lestat killed him in a church. The last time Louis saw death in a church, it was his own, in full view of the corpses of two unwitting priests. Memory is a monster, but so is he. He was transfigured on the steps of the altar very close to where four bodies lie now.

The recognition shows on his face. Vash and Knives, a third brother Louis wasn't aware of, and the dour man in black who poked his head into the soon-to-be General Store. They would be handsome corpses except for the twisted fear left on them. Louis knows that corpses never look like the people they were in life, not in any way that matters, but it disturbs him that this happened again, and to an increased number of Interlopers. The Darkwalker's increasing appetite rivals Claudia's, it seems.

Lestat will know his footsteps, but that doesn't matter. Something in Louis is glad to see Lestat whole, not broken on the altar like some fallen angel. It seems he was out hunting. Louis stops next to him, one hand coming up to rest on his arm just above his elbow.

"Did you feel it too, or were you able to guard your mind against it?" he murmurs so no one can overhear. He speaks in French out of habit, their somewhat private language, though translation happens anyway in this world. Lestat is the only person Louis knows that has an appreciable amount of power to do so.

His lip smarts where he bit it while cowering in that uncontrollable fear. He put some ice on it--no shortage of that in this place--but it's still an angry red welt freshly crusted over.

[ While there is no authority to stop her from doing it, Sam doesn't feel right about smoking inside of a church. Her compromise is to prop open the door, hover over the threshold, and blow her smoke outdoors. As a consequence, Sam is only partially thawed out when she lays eyes on Kieren, and her reaction time is slowed enough that she manages to mostly suppress her total shock. He could almost pass for another one of the Darkwalker's victims, except that he's standing upright and talking.

Sam takes a long drag from her cigarette, buying herself enough recovery time that she actually sounds normal when she does respond. ]

Yeah, I had seen them around too. They were together a lot. I guess there's that, at least. They got to stay together to the end.

[ She grimaces at her own attempt to grasp for sense in all this. Sometimes there are no silver linings. ]

[ Bigby is in the church too.

Not to investigate, though. Even if it's exactly the sort of thing he does back home, prowling all over crime scenes, he doesn't feel like doing it this time around. He knows other people must have picked the place clean already anyway, especially with how much attention so much sudden death got. No, he instead came back for a different reason entirely. He hoped it might get rid of that heavy feeling he's been having in his gut all day after learning who had died, returning here. Thinking about him.

.. but, to be fair, he expected to be alone. He purposefully waited for most of the day just to make sure that he'd be alone, not wanting the moment to be ruined by some other presence, or by seeing the bodies still lying there.

That creak, though, definitely tells him he's not alone. Bigby is of half a mind to just turn around and leave, to give up on the entire plan, but then he spots who's making that sound in the first place.

The guy in the woods, huh. The weird medical condition one. ]

.. if you're looking for the bodies, they've already been taken away.

[ It doesn't sound like an accusation. Bigby's voice isn't even harsh, really.

Instead it sounds.. weirdly heavy. Heavier than it had been, back in the woods. Like there's something weighing it down. ]

[ The action is so unexpected that - just for a moment - Bigby completely forgets why he came here in the first place. The relief that Snow is still very much alive only slowly starts to set in after a moment of utter shock, where the man has to come to terms for a moment that Snow's arms very much are around him right now.

It makes some decisions much easier. A part of Bigby wanted to do the exact same thing, after all, but he's always so cautious about these actions around Snow of all people. Even if he's wanted to hold her for hunderds of years at this point, it's not like he can just do that. If he could, he would've done it a long time ago. But he always told himself that if this was going to happen, it'd have to be on her terms. Her coming to him, if she ever felt anything for him at all.

This isn't that, he knows it. But it is still Snow seeking comfort in him, and who is he going to be to deny her that when all he wanted was to wrap his arms around her and protect her from the world, shelter her against him in the face of the Darkwalker?

So that's exactly what he does. While she's clinging to him, he moves his arms around her protectively. One hand remains on her back, but the other one moves a little higher up, gently cradling the back of her head while said head is still buried against him. There's something a little awkward in the gesture, but the protectiveness in it is so much stronger than that part. ]

Darkwalker. [ He manages to force out, still overwhelmed by the situation. Fear always hits Bigby a whole lot harder when he's so unused to feeling it, and then having Snow cling to him on top of it all? Talk about a double whemmy. ] It comes sometimes and it-- it kills people.

[ No other way to put it, even if he wishes he could tell her better news for once. ]

I didn't know if-- I thought it might have gotten you. [ The worried admission slips out, though it's quickly followed up by an: ] Are you okay?

[ Billy doesn't linger near the scene for too long.

He shows up, moving a little closer so he can see what exactly happened - and once he's seen it, he's also quick to turn away from it. Something about the man's face seems terribly pale, though it's hard to tell if it's always like that - look, he does look very British.. - or if it's due to the horror of what he just saw. But rather than moving away fully right away, he first just distances himself from the crowd to try and breathe, and it's then that Sam speaks up.

He slowly turns his head to look at her. There's a slight pause, like he's trying to tell whether he knows her, only to realise she's a stranger, and then he shakes his head. ]

No, none of them.

[ Thankfully. The threat of the Darkwalker is bad enough on a personal level, but there's at least one person here Billy really doesn't want to lose to it. ]

.. though I doubt they will be the last victims.

Ruby wasn't here to examine the bodies. She was just keeping an eye out on the area and helping out where she could. She didn't have the medical knowledge or know how to be of much good at examining corpses, but she could do crowd control.

She catches sight of Lestat when there's a lul and she gently steps into ear shot just in time to catch him murmur. She blinks a little confused at that.

"That might be the understatement of the century right there."

"Only in passing," Lestat says, with a shake of his head. Now isn't the time to make false claims of closer acquaintance than existed. For one thing, it would demand more of a performance of grief than he feels inclined to in the wake of the unwelcome disturbance to his evening.

"A loss for us all, I would think." He follows Lalo's line of sight with the easy subtlety of the hunter he is, more for the affect than for the purposes of concealment. He'd prefer that it be noticed. He didn't come all the way to this gruesome display of mortal terror to be overlooked.

"The sky turned at its approach," he supplies, as any idiot could do, but in tones implying some greater insight in development, "And it seems it brought the light with it. If this can be called a light."

Of course Lestat's gaze falls to Louis' mouth. How could it not, when they carry the same memory of a moment like and unlike this one? His own lips part slightly as he stares at the split of red over the swell of Louis', one of those looks he knows he is forbidden to linger in, and so often did anyway.

It's almost a balm for the sting of the question. He ought to take some pleasure in the knowledge that Louis still thinks him capable of anything, given how low he's fallen in his opinion of late, but he never enjoys being reminded of a shortcoming.

"No," he says, in the same tongue, with a curt shake of his head. "It took me unaware."

A better explanation than sheer ineptitude. It isn't as though he doesn't believe he could do better, the next time the creature descends on them. And descend on them again it will, or so the evidence suggests. His eyes flick up to Louis', and a thin, ironic smile flits over his features, an expression only for them.

"Did you worry about me, Louis?"

Lestat gives Ruby a gentle look, angling himself to face her as well as the bodies. He takes in her expression, the set of how she holds herself, and the calm that underlies her words. The exuberant young woman who taught him how to ride the snow on a single board has unexpected complexities, it seems.

"It may be," he agrees, his tone quiet but not coddling, "But the dead are past the reach of our concern. It's the living who still lie within it. And I must admit, I'm relieved to see you remain counted among the latter."

They're incorrigible, the two of them exchanging touches and looks that could be written off as meaning anything, but mean so much to the two of them. It's obscene. They're in a church, which doesn't mean a lot on its own, but so many people (including Louis) think it does. They're viewing what looks like a crime scene or an animal attack, corpses not yet covered and bundled off somewhere. There are people all around.

Louis can tell when Lestat is trying to downplay a shortcoming. He thinks there isn't anything to downplay. They were all simply overwhelmed, as the sun overwhelms a vampire. Something stomped into town, brought its kill count up to five, and the monster wasn't him or Lestat. It turned the sky as green as Louis's eyes.

His fingers twitch where they are on Lestat's arm. Suddenly the dried blood on his lip seems indecent, and he resists the urge to cover it like discovering a cloth hole in some embarrassing place.

"Are you so surprised? Do you think that I would feel nothin' if it were you there on the floor?" Bleeding out on the rug, the knife in Louis's hand-- "I barely knew some of them and I still feel somethin'. Lord... I even said the stupid one would get himself killed."

He could sound dismissive, casual about death as they often were. He can't quite bring himself to, just as he can't look away from the refracted-blue ice of Lestat's eyes.

Lalo, for his part, is very happy that Lestat isn't the type for performative grief. Pretending to comfort people experiencing real, actual grief irritates him enough; he can't imagine having to pretend-comfort someone who is only pretend-grieving themselves. Yeesh.

Lalo nods to Lestat's observation. True and obvious, of course, but with a tone behind it implying that there's more to the Lestat's insights than what can be surmised from words alone.

"Remember when that dipshit in the mask? A few months ago?" Lalo allows himself a smirk, figuring that Lestat isn't the kind of guy to be bothered. "There was green light then, too." Is it related? A coincidence? Who fucking knows. But it seems worth mentioning.

His smirk fades into an easy smile (like there aren't four dead bodies slowly transitioning into a state of rigor mortis right beside them) and he leans in, to shake Lestat's hand - if Lestat will allow it, of course. The man has a princely air about him, and Lalo would never want to show such bad manners as being presumptuous in front of royalty.

"Salamanca, by the way. Lalo Salamanca. And if I may say, I'm charmed to meet you."

"Oh, so it's desecration for a good cause, is that it?" Sam crosses her arms over her front and shoots him a thoroughly unconvinced glare. She's almost more offended that he thinks she might be stupid enough to believe that.

This girl! If "LMAO" were an expression, it would be Lalo's grin right now. He just shrugs, clearly having given up on convincing her...and intent to do what he's going to do anyway.

"Sure," he says. "If you wanna think about it like that." He picks up two knives. "Want one?"

Edited 2024-03-05 18:05 (UTC)

[ So different causes of death, it sounds like... It's all so strange. What is the pattern, here? Konstantin can't figure it out. ]

No, it's all right. The less you have to learn about it, the better. It's all so macabre.

[ The cosmonaut stands, brushing his hands over the front of his coat, turning to Levi. He hopes the answer to his next question will be "no", but he's willing to bet differently, unfortunately. ]

Did you also see the woman who died like this?

[ Konstantin turns, suddenly, at the sound of another's voice. He'd been looking down the hallway leading to the small living quarters, back turned to the rest of the place, hadn't noticed anyone else come in.

The kneejerk tension doesn't disappear, exactly — not when he takes in who it is. The man he's bumped into a couple of times now. The man who has something wrong with him, too. It's so... strange to have seen him in both ways: sitting across from him at a table, carrying on a civil conversation and then... devouring an animal's heart right in front of his eyes.

Konstantin stares over at him, letting some of that tension ease out of his shoulders, even if he stays guarded. But the other man's tone is.... weighted, thick, like it's being held down by a stone. The cosmonaut does notice that, and pauses a moment or two longer before replying. ]

I was here earlier — saw them already. Thought I'd come back now that everyone's gone. Look around, see if I can find... anything that could help. [ Clues, evidence, anything that might prove useful to explaining what the fuck is happening here.

He hesitates, before moving a little closer to where the other man stands. ]

Did you know them?

[ It would be impossible not to notice the very distinctive countenance of the man who'd once interrogated him with such hostility — if "countenance" is even the right word for it; the stranger still wears that odd mask, leaving him looking uncomfortably featureless.

Konstantin tenses for a moment, but the odd words he hears give him pause, and it's enough to have him looking away from the bodies his attention was fixed to, glancing around the church at the thin crowd of lingering spectators. He startles a little when he realises it's that man's voice, but... fainter, like little blips of a thing, a station he can't quite tune in to, only getting parts of it.

'can't protect anyone from anything here'

The cosmonaut stands from his crouch, eyeing Rorschach as he approaches him, carefully. He could almost swear that.... this was coming from somewhere else. But that doesn't make any sense. ]

Did you... say something? Just now.

[ Probably a bad idea to instigate conversation with this man, but Konstantin has never been one to play things particularly safely. Not for long. ]

Later, Konstantin will hate the fact that his eyes immediately drop to that welt of inflamed skin on the other man's bottom lip, evidence of a wound (of blood). It's the natural way for his eyes to go, maybe; when he talks to people, he looks them all over, welcoming conversation to him with bright eyes that roam a person's face, not shying away from it. He tends to watch people's mouths when they speak, and it often makes women blush (he doesn't dislike that fact).

But here, it's like some beacon, a thing that his eyes were drawn to instead of going there of their own free will. He stares for maybe a beat or two too long (and it's not with hunger, no, he's not hungry, but over time he's come to associate blood with 'feeding' all the same. Where do the lines begin and end? If the monster is inside of him and he keeps it fed, doesn't that make him a monster, too?)

He forces his eyes up to meet Louis de Pointe du Lac's, a name he certainly hasn't forgotten. There's a flare of genuine curiosity to what the other man's saying, and the cosmonaut's brows lift, brain churning thought against thought.

"That's something worth looking into," he agrees, somber but enthused by the prospect, and he glances back to the bodies for a moment.

"Has anyone found any reason to believe that this thing... targets specific people? Could it be possible it has a destination in mind, and whoever happens to be there at the time, just ends up..." The words trail off, obvious enough without him voicing them. Like this, features contorted in fear.

[He just shrugs. Death has been a part of his life since he was young, and a huge part of it for the last five or so years.]

La'an, yeah. She was right outside the community hall; I was one of the first to find her.

It was...weird. So quiet...same as this time.

[ Daisy wasn't here the last time the darkness arrived, but she's heard the story of what happened. How fear descended upon the town like a living thing, and how one woman died horrifyingly. But even the look in people's eyes as they spoke of it couldn't prepare her for experiencing it herself.

She hides alone, cowering in a closet of the closest house she can find, and she hates every second of it. She should be out there, she should be fighting whatever this is — but she can't move. And what could she do against something that sounds like that without her powers?

When it's finished, she leaves the little house and follows the strange path to the church, studying it and wishing desperately yet again that her team was here. Others are already in the church when she arrives, and by the time the bodies are removed, she knows she has to do something. So she extracts the small notebook from the battered purple backpack she carries and begins to write. The sounds, the way the bodies were found, the green light — she tries to describe it all in detail. She's nearly finished when she hears sounds from further within the church.

Notebook in hand, she follows those sounds to find a stranger whose face she's only glimpsed around town. It's clear this area has been used recently, so she makes a guess, trying to push down how shaken she is and appear like the professional agent she is. ]

Hey. You live here?

If only Lestat could tangle their fingers together as carelessly as he'd like. Even surrounded by prying eyes, it's difficult for him to resist the impulse. Louis is so distressed by this little incident, so clearly picturing Lestat in his own pooled blood. He enjoys it when Louis becomes sentimental; it's when he's at his most pliable.

"Not surprised," he says, half-truthfully. "You have a compassionate heart for even the most contemptible of creatures."

There are permitted intimacies. Lestat indulges in one when he reaches for Louis' shoulder, giving him a brisk, companionable clap there. If his hand happens to linger, or he thinks of the streaking furrows that must have healed to a fine map of his fingers beneath all of Louis' layers, what harm is there in that? They must support each other in this difficult time.

"But I am glad to see you whole," Lestat murmurs, this time with only truth behind the words. His thoughts follow close behind, projected into Louis' mind: "And flattered that you thought of me."

Lestat takes Lalo's hand readily, meeting Lalo's deferential approach with the gracious friendliness of one pleased by recognition. So few people know how to see quality when it stands before them, despite Lestat's best efforts to arrange himself to his best advantage.

The man standing before him with an easy smile resembles the man Lestat met in that bloodied chamber as an alligator at rest below the surface of a swamp resembles its own flashing teeth.

"As am I," Lestat says, voice not quite dipping into a murmur but suggestive of the possibility, his eyelids dipping slightly as he lingers on Lalo's handsome features with evident approval. Not so much as to venture into dangerous territory, but all acquaintanceships are a form of seduction, one way or another. "Lestat de Lioncourt, and I would say this was an auspicious reunion, if not for - "

He releases Lalo's hand and tips his own at the corpses, his face assuming an expression of mild disapproval mingled with an effort at morbidity. He could care less about the bodies, if he put his mind to it, but only by a hair's breadth.

"It'd seem whatever forces are at work in this place are fond of leaving a signature, although I can't imagine the necessity of it. It would be difficult to mistake this for an everyday misadventure." He shakes his head, mouth doleful, eyes gleaming. "Though that would presume that our stalking killer reasons to begin with."

[ Levi was.... one of the first to find her? Konstantin stares, looking the young man over again, but he doesn't seem particularly disturbed by the memory. (Again, that seems pretty typical for him by now, but... Konstantin hasn't forgotten how the boy had that brief moment of upset when recalling those mutated humans from his world. How he asked if they could talk about something else instead. Konstantin had taken him outside, tried to change the subject with talks of shopping and the brilliant Aurora lights overhead.)

He's quiet for a few moments, considering, remembering what it was like in his military days before the Cosmonaut Corps. Better not to keep it objective, look at facts and not dig in deeper. That's how you cope. ]

Do you believe it's a creature doing this? I've heard some people saying things like that.

[ There's little to be found, back here. Perhaps others have already pilfered through the dead men's belongings, or perhaps they didn't have much stored in their living space, but on the surface there doesn't seem to be much. Konstantin sees a few cans of food stacked on a shelf, a couple of tools. There's another white feather or two, which he makes note of as his eyes scan the room. No, not much on the surface at all.

But he means to look beyond the surface.

It's then that he hears a voice and his head quickly turns that way, dark eyes finding a woman he's not familiar with. Ever-observant, he takes in a few things quickly, namely the notebook and writing utensil in her hands, before he's looking back up to meet her gaze. As usual, the cosmonaut greets others with a warm, easy openness, a smile sent the stranger's way — even if there's something somber that weighs in the air, keeps his eyes a little soft. When he speaks, a strong Russian accent layers his words. ]

Hello there. No, I was just looking around.

[ A glance cast to the side, sweeping the seemingly innocuous living quarters of the church. ]

I thought there might be... something here. Something that might help explain what happened.

[ A beat, eyes returning to her. He's willing to bet he already knows the answer, but it's possible someone might've come in after what was left of those men were taken away. ]

Did you see it earlier? The bodies?

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Page 2 of 10

you can run but you can't escape

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cw: mention of self-harm and an autopsy

spoilers for ep1

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finale spoilers

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finale spoilers

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