imaginarynetwork | NEW DOCUMENT UPLOADED. OPEN FILE?

NEW DOCUMENT UPLOADED. OPEN FILE?

As a result of Sans and Sayori's investigation of KV, multiple videos are sent to each of the Reclaimers' bracers.

LUCRETIA.VID

The screen plays a recording of a memory.

Lucretia is standing, surrounded by group of folks in red robes. She herself is clad in a red robe, though the viewer can only infer this from Lucretia's own point of view. Most of the faces are unrecognizable to the Reclaimers, save a few select faces;

the face of the Elf woman in the umbrella that Sans, Wash, and McCree saw before, Barry Bluejeans, Davenport himself, and Maureen, Lucas Miller's mother. The other figures are an elf man that looks remarkably similar to the woman, a dwarf with an impressive beard, and an absolute hulk of a human man.

The elf woman reaches out to touch Lucretia's shoulder, and Lucretia looks at her. The woman's face is so kind as she addresses Lucretia's worry.

"This will work, you have to believe in me," she assures. "And if it doesn't— if dividing the Light of Creation into these relics doesn't work, then we will try your method.

But please, Lucretia. Just give this a chance. Believe in us."

The recording swaps.

Lucretia stands in front of a mirror— no, the mirror—, reaching forward.

"Please," she pleads, stifling a sob, voice riddled with anguish. "I need help. I need more time. I—

I can't do this without them.

Not again."

The recording ends.

LUP.VID

The elf woman sits across from the identical elf man she was with in the prior video. She's looking at her lap, though, only seeing the man's knees close to hers, like their limbs are a bridge between them that almost doesn't meet.

"You didn't mean for any of this to happen." He says to her.

"I know that. And I know it's good. Like, the Hunger's not here, and the hunger's worse than anything we've done. I just... I can't help but ask."

She looks the elf man across from her in the eye.

"Did we make the right decision?"

The elf man's brows knit together and he takes a breath.

"...Who knows if the shield would have worked. You know... sometimes, there aren't right decisions. Sometimes there's just decisions."

The recording ends.

CURSED.VID

From the perspective of someone nearby, you watch as the dwarf from the prior video is confronted by a hooded figure.

"Now, I don't know what you're talking about," comes his rough voice. "If you're hungry, well, the tavern just across the street has the most amazing-"

His voice is cut off as a hand reaches out from the robes and grasps the dwarf around the neck. The hand is made of black opal, and as black tendrils reach out to stab into the dwarf, the dwarf's own eyes turn black as well.

The recording swaps to the vision of a more recent Lucretia.
It's the Lucretia the Reclaimers recall, in her current age and current outfit, or at least what she wore regularly before candlenights.

The view remains concentrated on Lucretia, but passing as if unnoticed by the recording, a shock of black shoots up through Lucretia's staff very suddenly.

"Are you alright, Johann?" Lucretia asks, raising a brow, looking genuinely concerned.

The view shakes as if the person whose memory this is has shaken their head, slowly.

"It's nothing, m'am..."

The recording ends.

CANDLENIGHTS.VID

This memory seems to come from a shorter stature as well. IT's the Moon Base as it stood in Faerun, and a child's hand— Angus's hand— reaches out to push the door open. Anyone who has visited the Voidfish's chambers after hours may recognise the room he enters.

"Madame Director? Are you in here?" he calls out.

The memory patches in as if it's skipped a bit, and now the scene becomes more clear.

Lucretia stands in the middle of the room, hunched over herself, clutching her head with one hand and the staff with the other. Davenport stands at her side, and there are other Reclaimers— Reclaimers that may be recognized as a handful those who haven't appeared yet on the island— around, as well as some Seekers and guards.

"You have to leave," Lucretia demands, her voice cracking as if with pain.

"M'am, you have to listen to-"

"Now! There is no more time for listening!"

Lucretia shouts, her voice like venom. When she looks up, her eyes have turned completely black.

"I can't... I can't hold it back anymore,"

"Not without us!" Angus asserts. "You can-- let us help you!"

"You don't understand! There is no more hope! There is nothing! Even if you leave— this is the end!"

All of a sudden, thorns shoot out of Lucretia's staff, which has turned completely into black opal. The thorned vines that shoot from Lucretia's heart and staff are all that black opal material, too, and they shoot out in every direction, grasping and curling around everyone in the room, Reclaimers and Seekers alike. Even Angus is caught in the vines.

He catches Lucretia's face again, watching as it wrenches in despair, black eyes still crying real, human tears.

"I'm sorry," Lucretia chokes. "This is all I can do."

Even more tendrils extend, wrapping around Lucretia herself, consuming her, devouring her. Angus reaches out, but those vines are starting to consume everything around them as well. Outside of the dome, the sound of a storm begins to ring, amplifying the terror of the moment.

Angus reaches out, trying to free himself from the tendrils, reaching for the hand of a dragonborn woman before a thorny vine tears her away from him.

He loses his balance, tumbling down a few more branches, and when he's finally stopped tumbling he looks around to see a book has fallen out of his bag.

CALEB CLEVELAND AND THE IMAGINARY ISLAND, bears the book's title, but its cover is gilded and shining.

A voice completely unlike the voice heard on the island calls out directly from the book's pages; the voice of a Relic.

"Use me. Save yourself. Save everyone."

Angus reaches out and grabs the book.

The recording ends.

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[Sans replies to Mia and then he looks at the umbrella and the cabana he's hanging out in right now.]

Okay, so I don't think my roommates are gonna be happy if this blows this place up or somethin', so hang on a sec.

[Sans will carry the umbrella out a little ways to the beach to set it down.

This feels anticlimactic.

Wait, he's got it.]

Guess I've just gotta... Make it rain.

[And he drops a line of twelve bones from the sky directly onto the umbrella to pierce it through.]

[Something in the air crackles as Sans places the umbrella on the sand. That's all, though. Even as the bones drop in a perfect line, it doesn't move. Everything is still.]

[Until it's pierced, pinned in place in twelve points. There's a sound like: fwoomph. And it explodes.]

[Like a fireball, but out. Expanding across the sand flat and wide, searing heat blasting an instant glass circle in its wake for yards and yards — save for a small but very precise fire-free ring around Sans.]

[The umbrella itself is gone. Thoroughly annihilated. But that doesn't seem to matter much anymore. From the flashpoint, a figure rises, seeming to be made of flame wrapped in a red cloak, white eyes glowing from within the black smoke of the hood. There's a sound like a hundred people talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming at once, and then it — she — descends. Toes not quite touching the still-hot glass, hands smoking, pulses of fire sparking off every few seconds, she looks at Sans. Looks at the treeline. Looks at the ocean. Looks down.]

Oh, man, I really fucked up this beach, huh.

[That was a very impressive entrance/exit. There's smoking glass all around him and a red-robed figure sparking with fire and Sans appreciates the fire-free ring he's ended up in.]

Once it cools down it'll be a good tourist attraction. [It's fine. Sans was kind of expecting two people, though... But the specifics of umbrella escapes and also being trapped in umbrellas are unknown to him.]

Huh. That's true. You could skate on it. People like skating, right?

[Whatever. The concern passes her by pretty quickly. She drifts, sort of nebulously and without any appearance of effort, towards Sans.]

Hey, you're Sans, right? You figured some stuff out for us earlier. [Us? Sans could ask, or he could just look again like he did before. The same sense is there now: a matryoshka of one heart held within a larger one. She contains multitudes, or at least two.]

Hey, do you — there was somebody here before, I know you have questions, sure, but first answer this for me: have you seen Lion?

Yeah, dress this beach up, it'll be a real glassy joint. [BUT ANYWAY. Sans has to stretch his spotty memory for that one.] Not since before we ended up on this island. [Sadly Sans did not see them when everyone arrived on the beach.]

[Damn, too bad this is a huge bummer of a statement or she'd absolutely yeet a pun in response. Next time, Gadget. For now she just sort of slumps for about 0.25 seconds before drifting a little upwards and turning out to the sea again.]

Okay. Well. I'll figure that out later.

You're Sans. I'm Lup. Nice to meet each other. You guys got it about Lucretia, right? Volcano? Thorns? Symbolism?

Yeah. Most of 'em even got the "don't kill her" part. [Most of them...] You got access to the net, or do you still need to borrow mine? [Please pause to picture Sans just showing an umbrella a screen like that's totally normal.] ...Also, are you still crashing in the cabana?

[Sans actually doesn't mind, but that's going to be weird to explain to his roommates.]

Haha, I sure hope so! [Haha. Haha.]

No, I'm sort of, uhh . . . [She lifts a spectral wrist. No bracer.] Incommunicado? Not part of your club, bud. So sharing's great, thanks in advance.

I'm super dead, so I don't have to sleep, buuut I'd hang. Being in an umbrella? Pretty lonely.

[Sans can imagine, kind of. But, since Lup is bringing it up and all...]

Even with that binary soular system you've got going on? [Sans isn't sure if that's natural or not. He's sure there were two souls in the umbrella, and now it feels like Lup has two. That second one did seem pretty quiet...]

Edited (improved the joke) 2020-10-15 02:10 (UTC)

[This time, suddenly, a distinctly different voice speaks from the same mouth.]

You know, I really wanted to hand it to you for being so astute in acknowledging my presence.

And now I want to take it right back. That was awful. I loved it.

Edited (tnavigator is bad at code ) 2020-10-15 02:26 (UTC)

I can't wait to explain this to everybody else. [It'll be so weird. There are so many things he can go on tangents about. There's a good chance nobody will understand anything. It's great.] You got a name, too, buddy?

Oh, me? I'm Taako. Taako Taaco. Emphasis on the aa.

[Without hesitation or hiccup, the lich switches voices seamlessly, suddenly rolling its... head, and lack of eyes.]

Don't listen to him. There's no emphasis.

Oh, there's an emphasis.

[From the way the lich lays their hand on their chest, the emphasis is pretty clearly on Taako himself...]

Edited 2020-10-15 02:44 (UTC)

I'll emphasize the emphasis. [After hearing these voices for a while, Sans has another actually relevant question!] Y'know, I definitely heard you two in the videos, and in those, you weren't attached at the hip like this.

[Or at the soul, which actually would probably be more uncomfortable, in Sans's estimation.]

[There's no visual indicator that Taako's gone, but everything goes back to how it was before: just Lup talking, one voice, the soul inside her soul dormant and weak.]

I mean, no. We're just regular twins. It'd be fucking awkward otherwise. This isn't ideal for either of us, trust me. Things are scrambled right now. Actually, you guys could help us unscramble it later sometime? When the existential threats are under control? Great.

The short version is the Hunger's got agents here, for whatever reason. Real persuasive guy. And they neutralize threats in weird ways. This is one of 'em. Two twins for the price of one. Put a perfectly good elf in an umbrella. That kind of bullshit.

Yeah, we can just add you guys to the list. [Their collective to-do list is already so weird, what's a couple of twins stuck in one kind of dead body? The umbrella part is already sorted out, even.] Did you get a look at whoever's helping out the Hunger? Maybe snap some quick pics?

Pics? Nah. But you saw one of 'em. That video, the hooded guy with tentacle hands? Him. Not much for a wanted poster, but, y'know.

[Her un-shoulders shrug, the general impression of bemusement on a face almost entirely devoid of facial features nonetheless very easy to read.]

I know they're from here, this planar system. I know they're high on the devil's nihilism lettuce. I know they like hoods. That's what I got for you, chum.

[Well, that's easy to remember, at least.] Should probably emphasize the tentacle hands or someone's gonna be jumping us. [You know, what with the whole red hooded cloak ensemble Lup has going on and Sans's hoodie. Nothing better for mystery than a hood, apparently!] So, get Lucretia out of that volcano, get to that place in the Cursed Zone, union-mandated double break, something something the Hunger [seriously is there even a plan for the Hunger at this point], lunch, after lunch snack, get you guys back in two bodies again. Anything else on that list?

Shit, if we all make it that far I think just vacation? An actual vacation, not imaginary island vacation.

[There's the vague sense of a smile on her non-face.]

What happened to you not being a leader, big guy? That sounds like leadery talk.

Does is count as leadery talk if you're plannin' on dumping it on everybody else-- [Actually, wait, that's just delegation. Well, anyway.] I'm too lazy to be a leader. That's supposed to be Lucretia's job, except she got stuck in that volcano. I'm just givin' people suggestions.

Yeah. That's kind of ol' Lucretia's whole deal now, huh?

[There's a softness to Lup's voice. She rolls up her sleeves, exposing more bone.]

Speaking of, you've copped on to where she is, right?

[With no eyes, Lup still somehow seems to be giving Sans a scanning look.]

We're working on the assumption she's on volcano heart island, through that mirror maze Mira found. [Volcano heart island is probably not its official name.] 'Course, seein' as the thorns came from her, maybe we could follow those to the source, but that's kind of difficult seein' as most of us need to breathe air.

Well thank goodness someone's good at getting hints around here.

[It sounds more affectionate and teasing than annoyed, at least.]

...Wait a second, Sans, do you breathe air? I don't know much about your particular kind of... alien. Monster.

We just call ourselves monsters. And nope. There's nothin' in my ribcage but air and magic. My bro did some cave diving earlier. Found the book that got us all here. [Listen. Sans doesn't need to remember Papyrus to brag about him.]

Brother skeletons.

[Lup's face can't smile, but it's audible in her voice.]

Isn't that adorable.

Well!

[With bony hands on her hips, Lup continues to assess.]

Between you not breathing and, what, a million potential spells? I'm not too worried. Not that I mind doing a bit of recon first.

Sounds better'n going into a volcano blind. Fire's your thing, yeah? [He has gotten a few hints to suggest this.]

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imaginarymods - 2020-10-21 01:35 (UTC) - Expand

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