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Post by Èdan on Apr 20, 2020 3:51:30 GMT -6
The first card is flipped over and reveals the image of a wall of masks. The man gives a sardonic chuckle, the irony not beyond him, though there’s a bemused undertone to it. These kinds of cards are common currency with these kinds of decks - as mystical as they are intended to play into the expectations of people. Simpler minds would look upon it with awe and wonder (how did it know? Surely it must be some divine force driving the draw of the cards!) but he knows better than that. The reason masks appeal to such a wider audience of people is because everyone wears one every day of their life, whether they’re aware of it or not (whether they want to or not).
He just happens to have made it a collector’s habit of sorts, fully embracing the inevitable. There’s no more difference between him and the rest of the world than there is between a lucid dreamer and simply a dreamer - in the end both still wake up, one just knows to expect it.
. 26 . April: 26 Tiken Tekai
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Post by Èdan on Apr 20, 2020 3:52:05 GMT -6
He lets the card drop onto the table and moves to flip over the next one. At first it doesn’t seem to make much sense, just a combination of a homestead house against a hilly backdrop, a figure on the forefront and a storm in the back. The house seems something of a local style, most likely denoting to the origin of the deck itself. Well.. so much for predictability.
The man flips over the third and last card in the row. Compared to the rest, its an entire other kind of beast - a mountain of fire and ash, vaguely shaped like creature of some sort, if made from rock and lava. The immediate resemblance to his mind are stories about The Maw, off to the west of the continent, known as a mythical place in and of itself, filled with all manner of creatures, both terrible and godly.
Which is a fine flare for the dramatic, but what brief time he spent travelling through the edge of the desert, they never got even close to that red-walled place.
. 27 . April: 27 Tiken Tekai
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Post by Èdan on Apr 20, 2020 3:52:44 GMT -6
Another fanciful trick to chalk up to charlatan tricks, hah.
He places the card down onto the table, and seems to idly stare at it. The brow furrows lightly and he moves to push the third card next to the second, so their edges connect. Lines running from one interconnect to the other, as if the two cards were one continuous picture. The storm of the homestead evident to be the roil of the mountain and the hilly middle-ground the planes of smoke and ash in the third card. He could swear to see cracks in the house where there hadn’t been before, black edges, charring.
The man stares at the combined image for a while, before with a grunt he shuffles the top row back up and into the pack. This place plays tricks on the mind and ever more seems to seek to wiggle its way into thoughts. Well intentioned or not, he’s certainly not about to allow it.
. 28 . April: 28 Tiken Tekai
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Post by Èdan on Apr 20, 2020 3:53:21 GMT -6
The gloved finger taps against the table as his gaze lands on the bottom row, the untouched three cards. By now he anticipates to know what they will be about, having seen the pattern this cursed place was presenting. There’s a battle internal, something between being wiser to let things go and too vain for the chance of being proven right.
He raised the first card.. And slowly flips it.
The image is a dark knight, clad in deep purples with magenta flames around and a matching glow of a sword. The face beneath the helm twists into another sardonic sneer. The manor has humour. Not great humour, mind, but it’s trying. It would have to try a lot harder than that, however.
He flips over the second card, and it met with the purple-blue haze of fractals, mathematically perfect, eternally twisting and turning in on itself, but absolutely in order. This scratches something at the back of his mind, though he cannot place it, something deeper than he’d like.
. 29 . April: 29 Tiken Tekai
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Post by Èdan on Apr 20, 2020 3:53:56 GMT -6
He puts the card down slowly, almost as if giving it some reverence (but nothing as pitiful as that to a simple card). The eyes land on the last one, the back of the mind still tingling with a sensation both familiar and uncomfortable. When he flips it, the image is all yellow and green, lightning that melts, lines that hurt to look at.
He sits back in the chair, away from the table and takes a deep long breath. Enough of this farce.. There really should be no reason to entertain the temptations of this house. He shuffles the cards off the table and back into the pack, putting it away for good.
A sudden exploding noise nearly makes him jump, the immediate thought going to the balloon the bear was tied to and how it probably has managed to mangle it with its claws. But when he turns around to look, the bear is still happily sitting in the middle of the room, the moon hovering over it. If not that, then.. He turns back around and finally sees another bottle sitting on the table next to him.
. 30 . April: 30 Tiken Tekai
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Post by Renathan on Apr 20, 2020 4:57:46 GMT -6
 What a strange trinket? Wait... This shape makes no sense! Where did it come from, anyway? |
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Post by Èdan on Apr 26, 2020 3:46:16 GMT -6
The bottle is regarded with the scrupulous gaze of one who is well aware that they have been made the butt of some continuous joke, but also one who is still unable to find the jester. There’s that temptation again.. To open up the bottle and see what kind of dreams are really contained. Would they be dreams of the people here? Are they some random imagery snatched from the ether? (Could they be used against someone? Would his own dreams be here, floating around somewhere? Would he be giving them up when being too curious?)
He taps the bottle against the table lightly a few times, thoughts wandering, then finally pockets it to the pouches on the belt. If everything he finds doesn’t disappear like morning dew as soon as he steps out of the manor, there will be time to look into it later. Right now the presiding concern is still to find one’s way out, first.
. 31 .
April: 31 Tiken Tekai
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Post by Èdan on Apr 26, 2020 3:50:18 GMT -6
At that very thought there is a slow sound off to the side, increasing in volume as much as in intensity - the sound of paper slowly being torn apart. When he turns to look, he sees the wallpaper on the other end of the room slowly split apart as some invisible force jaggedly cuts lines through it, two, three, four at a time. Slowly, he stands, instinct reaching for the glaive as he brings it up before him. What in the Order-damned hells..
The slicing of the wallpaper ceases when all the lines seem to meet another, then, ever so slowly it begins to, then with a sudden slump and flutter, the piece of wallpaper falls down to reveal a doorway. Not even a door itself, but an arch seemingly concealed behind the paper itself, completely indistinguishable.
Now, there are many instances wherein men were not so dissimilar to beasts. The primary was a sense of preservation, deep within, a primal part of the brain that looked at an opening and went: that’s the trappiest trap that ever trapped and we don’t trust it.
Unfortunately, he didn’t exactly have a choice.
. 32 .
April: 32 Tiken Tekai
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Post by Èdan on Apr 26, 2020 3:50:50 GMT -6
Peering through the doorway the other side seems to be a fairly plain, featureless room (and that much more suspicious. There’s nothing more dangerous than something which appears entirely too simple). But it is the only option for moving forward. The man peers back behind them, still no other option presented by the door. White, plain, absolutely-a-trap room it is.
“Come along, bear,” he mutters and steps through. He knew the bear was most likely a figment of the house, not unlike the actual bear cub back at the tower (though, in either case, it was a strangeness still to address beasts in any specific manner). Many would consider this, then, a sign of mentality slipping, when choosing to speak to the figments the house presents. In his mind, if there was an option to talk to a random figment or talk to one’s self, the figment is distinctly preferable.
As the man and bear (plus dove) entered into the other room, a sound behind them went entirely unheard - the soft sound of thick dark liquid dripping through the wall.
. 33 .
April: 33 Tiken Tekai
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Post by Èdan on Apr 26, 2020 3:51:18 GMT -6
Entering the room didn’t seem to spark any immediate reaction to the room. More novice explorers would hastily call such a situation a good thing.. But novice explorers would be wrong. Just because something hasn’t happened doesn’t mean it wont. In fact, if anything, it is gearing up for a mighty happening that much more.
Walking further in, the white of the room was both blinding and featureless - the wall, the ceiling, the floor, it seemed entirely difficult too tell where one ended and another began. Squinting against the glare of some unseen light, the man does notice something on the floor some ways off. A strange object (a perfect bait). All the same, the entire house has been one great, big trap, and it has made it distinctly clear it likes to play.
Failure to play could be worse than risking to. So, the man wanders towards it, and picks up the.. something.
. 34 .
April: 34 Tiken Tekai
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Post by Èdan on Apr 26, 2020 3:51:54 GMT -6
‘Something’ being the accurate term for the object. It’s geometric, but nothing about it makes sense, and the more he looks at it, the more his eyes (and brain) start to hurt. Turning it around to see other sides just makes the effect ten times worse. Ugh.. This goddess-damned house.
Tearing sounds behind them and the man quickly spins around - the doorway has un-shred itself closed again, but before it stands the dark, dripping humanoid form of the nightmare from before. So.. they can go through walls. Wonderful. Instinctively, he searched for another way out, but for the featureless walls of the room, it could be anywhere and nowhere. A laughter sounds, a giggle, turning halfway through into the echoing reverberations of something altogether sinister.
The nightmare is smiling now, a rictus grin forming among the globbing surface of its form. It raises misshapen arms and colour begins to drain into the room - one by one the floor fills up with black tiles, stark against the white, and in short order, the floor has become chequered. He stares down and around, and something clicks.
King’s pawn. (I see..)
. 35 .
April: 35 Tiken Tekai
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Post by Lethalia on Apr 26, 2020 4:30:24 GMT -6
 encapsulated dream, fleeting in the wake, of black nightmare's embrace |
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Post by Èdan on Apr 26, 2020 5:41:01 GMT -6
The chuckling nightmare raises a hand again and globules of black and white begin to form from the ground scattered among the floor. They form piece of furniture, strangely, but each side a specific colour, each piece a specific role - stools out on the front, cupboards off to the sides, coat racks lining the core in the middle, and the core itself made up of tall-backed armchairs of distinct designs.
The man watches as these apparitions form up around him, glaive lowering. Manor’s rules, he reminds himself. He is in its playground, not the other way around. Sure, ‘trapped’ in the playground is more accurate, but the reward is escape, well..
“Is it a game to be played, then?” he asks the shadow, calling across the board in the low rasp of his. The nightmare raises a hand, indicating across the board as the deep-set laughter continues. He follows the indication and now notices a piece to be missing from the game array - the knights.
. 36 .
April: 36 Tiken Tekai
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Post by Èdan on Apr 26, 2020 5:41:36 GMT -6
Distastefully blunt, or perhaps ironically echoing. The manor has a dark sense of humour, but it’s not the first entity (or person) he has come across that does. The knight straightens in posture, takes a bow to the nightmare and moves to take in position at the corner of the table. With the entity on the black side, he’s left to join the white pieces (perhaps the house didn’t know him as well as it thought).
A small bottle is waiting for him there, as if to indicate the position. He picks it up and puts both it and the strange mind-bending object away, before taking up position as the knight. Just one knight. The nightmare takes up position opposite but not mirrored, making it two knights for the dark side (the manor is not above cheating).
The board being set, the pieces begin to move. The pale side should begin, but dark or white, both sides’ pieces seem to move simultaneously. Stools advance, cupboard fortify, coat racks slide across the field smoothly and everything becomes a mish-mash of motion.
. 37 .
April: 37 Tiken Tekai
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Post by Èdan on Apr 26, 2020 5:42:10 GMT -6
To say the effect is maddening is an understatement, as the man ducks the jumping pieces and side-steps the sliding coat racks. This is not how King’s pawn is supposed to be played.. The rules have been turned on their head and there’s no order in sigh--
He pauses, realization dawning. Oh. No wonder the manor is especially grinding on his nerves with the shift. Everything is chaos and chaos incarnate. Even something as orderly and regimented as King’s pawn is but a joke to the manor and its entities. To a deep core part of him it’s insulting - he’s lived a portion of a lifetime venerating order and the manor seems to be seeking to dig its claws into it, to rip that sense of self apart.
A stool dashes past as the man remains standing in his place, looking out across the dizzying field of movement. The nightmare has not yet moved either, only staring him down.
. 38 .
April: 38 Tiken Tekai
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