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Nikkai · 11-15-2019, 12:02 AM

XImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#007db9e8', endColorstr='#7f9ea3',GradientType=0 ); /* IE6-9 */ }.nikkaiq_quote1 { position: relative; z-index: 5; font: 15px 'Nothing You Could Do', cursive; color: #212b34; }.nikkaiq_quote2 { position: relative; z-index: 5; font: 15px 'Nothing You Could Do', cursive; color: #212b34; }.nikkaiq_name { position: relative; z-index: 5; font: 50px 'Mr Dafoe', cursive; color: #C1CFD9; text-shadow: 0px 0px 8px #000000; padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px; }.nikkaiq_text { position: relative; z-index: 5; color: #C1CFD9; width: 550px; text-align: justify; padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px; } </style><center><div class="nikkaiq_container1"><div class="nikkaiq_container2"><img class="nikkaiq_image" src="https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/99ab68c4-140b-4a51-8cbe-094930290c63/ddjuhtk-b74596e8-a246-46e3-92b7-4edc11fdd582.png/v1/fill/w_1087,h_735,q_70,strp/nikkai_fin_by_littlewillow_art_ddjuhtk-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9ODY2IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvOTlhYjY4YzQtMTQwYi00YTUxLThjYmUtMDk0OTMwMjkwYzYzXC9kZGp1aHRrLWI3NDU5NmU4LWEyNDYtNDZlMy05MmI3LTRlZGMxMWZkZDU4Mi5wbmciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.DHgo_P0thdmSsX3T7M1De6rvTKXCZ5AbEFzHkEvbcng"><div class="nikkaiqgradient"></div><div class="nikkaiq_quote1">I've seen crazy things - out in the forest,<br>I've seen monsters chasing dreams</div><div class="nikkaiq_text"> <i><b>Vox</b> is eliminated for failure to respond to Round 2. This will be nothing but a bad dream – but if he’s currently alive, he will have nightmares about his losses for one BQ year (2 RL) months after waking, and he cannot wake until the rest of these questers have succeeded or failed (AKA the end of this quest).</i>

In order to make sense of her new world order, the grulla mare needs them to succeed. It’s an impossible task, even for them, the dead; all the determination in the world is not enough to rewrite the rules of life and death. But they have more than determination – they have Nikkai, and whatever strange powers she’s been sent back into Life with. Some others might have simply fled into a new life, taking advantage of the power she never had the first time around, but that’s just not the way of the mare whose entire life had been devoted to serving others; lack of loyalty had not been one of her faults (though she had many faults). So she reaches out to help them, immersing herself in their struggles.

The buckskin mare is from time before time; like herself. Nikkai can feel the age here, the deep need to reach a lost love. The Gates was not ever a place she loved, but the older mare’s connection to the tree is as strong as her connection to the waterfall. It’s easy to bouy her up with roots and branches, as she strikes out across the water.

The bay stallion is another older than she – much, much older. He seems fueled more by irritation than by love, but determined he is. Determined enough to brave the help of the monster in the water, anyways. She pulls it from his knowledge, and he trusts its deep voice and steps off into the unknown.

This gray face, she knows. Her eyes hold Dillan’s longer than most of the others; Nikkai, too, wishes there was more time to connect. But she is being pulled in a million directions, and she can’t lose focus. Dillan’s child is not her grandchild – that was not fated to be, though it had looked likely, for a time – but she yearns to help her old friend anyway. But each item that freezes on the surface of the river is a drop of power that she can’t extend another direction.

The blood-red colt (no – not a colt? But his soul feels young to her) can’t be motivated by any of his internal feelings, standing frozen, and so she is forced to motivate him, rather than help him. She needs all of them to participate. The wolves are the shape of his fear, sending him surging forward.

The youngest of the dead so far, this one takes the challenge head on and dives into the river. It even steals Nikkai’s breath for a moment, the way she rushes headfirst into the danger for the one she loved. With this, Nikkai can identify. A lack of fear had gotten her murdered, after all. But thankfully the young are imaginative and resilient, and the guiding light is not hard to magick along.

She is one of the most reluctant. Perhaps it is something that happened to her in life – Nikkai can see that, if she tries, but it’s blurry and confusing; there’s too much going on to hone in on finding the answers. But in the end, she tries to swim across, and her temporary setback leaves them both breathless. Thankfully, the motivation wells from deep after that, and when the coin bounces across the river a way become clear.

The nearly white mare has the same passion as Dillan – a mother whose child is stuck here, in this not-life. Nikkai, a mother, finds her own passion reflected in the stranger, and her heart and strength are lifted by the mare’s strong song. It helps to keep her balancing all of their efforts as this mare sets across the riverbed.

The smallest of those who have been called into this strange afterlife experience with her is a practical creature – he does not value the same things as she; his heart does not sing with the chance to save his mother. But he is certainly innovative, and she wants <i>all</i> of them to succeed. She helps the vine to make it to his mother’s grasp, and hopes it will hold his weight.

This stranger’s imagination is like running in circles – the most confusing of their dreamlike states. It is all Nikkai can do to keep up, and she throws an inordinate amount of magic at sustaining the mare’s solutions. It makes sense to the mare that the water can’t hurt her because she’s dead, but making that real is more than a little challenging.

Two parents, two children; it hurts almost as much to see Larva and Dillan’s life falling apart in death as her own did. Nikkai had no daughters, but she was a mother of three and would have died for her sons, had she not been murdered before having the chance. Thankfully, creating a bunch of Larva’s is one of the easier tasks she is managing, and she doesn’t have to give him much of her full attention to help.

It had definitely hurt, to fall from the top of the waterfall in life. She might not have asked the question out loud, but Nikkai can offer an answer anyway. But the blue mare is another who draws upon the strength of their old homes, trying to send herself across on the memory of a home that no longer exists, and the loyalties they engendered. Is there no one who feels this connected to the new lands? The mist she is maintain for this mare’s walk is leaving her almost as breathless as some of them, brushed under the water. (She’s not sure how many of them she can help).

This one, at last, feels strongly connected to the <i>now</i>, or at least, the recent past. And less inclined to foolishly diving into a battle against the waves she can’t hope to win – she waits for a better opportunity, and Nikkai must dig deep to present one. In the end she just moves some of the fog and mist upriver to help, digging deep into her own endurance.

Most of those who have been dragged into this dream (nightmare?) have something to strive for. But there’s always a margin of error – and this chestnut is the one here. She wants to be dead. But if they don’t succeed, death will mean nothing. She needs her to participate. Nikkai has to show her something she can’t refuse – herself. It rubs her the wrong way, but she needs ever soul to work together.

He is one of the most defeatist; his outlook almost as black as his coat. He’s not going to fight for this chance, and she’s tired and angry about it, her temper starting to boil under her own strain. She sends image after image from his past, until something changes. Maybe it’s too late, as he nears the waterfall; but there is bravery in forgiveness, and maybe that will be enough?

The strain is affecting her. She can’t force herself to manipulate this scenario into something she’s more comfortable with – she doesn’t know if she could sacrifice a child for a lover, but she does feel the resonation of loving something (or someone) so single-mindedly. Frostreaver steps onto the backs of her own children and Nikkai’s threads to all of them start to unravel.

She’s losing her grip, for real this time. Her help is less helpful. This mother’s desperation isn’t any less powerful than the others, but Nikkai is stretched too thin. She tries to prevent things from crashing into Cress, but things are slipping out of her grasp.

<b> “I’m sorry,”</b> she gasps it out, pain in every syllable, even as she loses all of them. Water crashes over, under, around; the current increases and even the shores flood, sweeping the living and dead along in its icy grasp. She had lived through all of their deaths, and now they all get to live through hers. For Nikkai, it’s the feeling of Core’s hooves smashing into her once, twice, sending her tumbling over the edge of the waterfall. For each of them, it will be Core overlaid with their own nightmares, for a confusing mash of memories. She remembers the feeling of being unable to draw breath, water rushing into her ears and eyes, and the pain of her body being dashed against the rocks underneath the waterfall. They will know this too, in a way she never intended for them.

But of course they can’t die again, as they’re all already dead. But somehow they can be dashes against these rocks in another layer of death, and though they are reunited with their person they were trying to reach, fate says they can’t all go home. Nikkai wasn’t strong enough to send them all. Her regret and helplessness washes over all of them, a nearly cloying feeling. A current of anger runs through it, that even now at her most powerful, she can’t do this. She can’t heal them, and send them onward. The warrior tries, reaching for the magic, but she’s drained it to a mere trickle. There’s not an endless supply, after all. <b> “I’m so sorry, I can’t fix it all. But there is so much to fix…”</b> she trails off, looking around at the broken people around her, bleeding into the shallow water, and doesn’t even realize she looks the way she had the day she died, standing before them bleeding out slowly. <b> “I can send half of you back. Everyone will have to choose – I can heal your person, and send them back to life; or you can let them go peacefully back to death, and go back to help fix the world yourselves.”</b></div><div class="nikkaiq_quote2">& I wanna be by your side<br>when we light up the sky for the world to see</div><div class="nikkaiq_name">Nikkai</div> </div></div><font size="2">html by devin | lyrics by The National Parks </font> </center> </style>

<b>Final Entry</b>
->Oops, everyone fell over the waterfall. (You had to see that one coming though, right??). They experienced Nikkai’s murder but overlaid with one of their own nightmares or experiences. The person they were trying to reach also go swept over.
->It’s death so nobody died but nobody is in great shape at this point. #sorrynotsorry
->You character has to choose – send their person back to life to help fix everything, and stay dead; or go back to life to help fix things themselves, and let their person go back to a peaceful death (obviously this doesn’t mean you have to play this character for a long time if you don’t want to, you’re not committing to anything for you or another character!); for the purpose of this quest, the character who doesn't go back to life wouldn't just be able to cross over like everyone else can at the moment, they'd be for-real dead
->They can communicate directly with Nikkai with their reasoning or it can be in the head
->Deadline for final posts is <b>Monday, November 18th at 12:00 AM EST</b>.

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