day nine

[guestcontrol]

dreamland day nine 10 players remaining. There are no clocks in your dorm room to help you mark the passing of time, but at a certain point, in the early hours of the morning, a cheerful chime tune plays over the loudspeaker. Whether you're awake or asleep, the door to your dorm room is now unlocked. You'll have about a forty five minutes, in which you can get ready or grab some breakfast, before the door that allows you into the park unlocks. By this time, you may or may not have noticed that one of your number is missing. Oh, there's one other thing this morning - your bracelets are no longer working. Fortunately, your rooms have all been left unlocked, as is the entrance to the park. Oh, and you still might not want to go near the fences; the automatic weapons in the guard towers are still a thing. The chimes play again, to announce that the park is open, and the rides and music begin to come back to life as a voice plays over the loudspeaker. "Congratulations to the tippy top ten! You made it!" You will have until 4 PM to explore the park and talk amongst yourselves. Somewhere in the park, you'll find the body of Oz Vessalius. rulebook character statuses private conversations graveyard

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[cheats]

[ And he does not stop screaming, though his voice getting rougher and hoarser as he continues is at least enough to quiet it. It must seem odd, because this visceral reaction would even be quite a lot for a close family member, and yet here Ciel was despairing over someone he can't have known more than a week. Especially considering Ciel's personality, this was too much for him to expression.

So... It had to be something more.

He stays where he is, shaking from head to toe, and though his hands cover his face, his eye is still wide, focused sharply, yet only on the circle before him. He's seeing something else, and that's clear enough, but what it is could never really be guessed. ]

No, it can't— I am me, and I am...

[ It sounds mad as he lapses into repeating that, over and over again, I am me. Because his thoughts are blending together in a frightening way. He's the boy in the cage, reaching out to the hand of a demon, but he's also the boy on the altar with the knife in his chest, dead and staring. But is that boy here now? Which boy was it? Is it Ciel on the altar, or is it a boy named Oz? He can't tell. He can't tell, and that's the most frightening thing of all—

He's going to... be consumed. Or is he already dead? He really just can't tell. ]

[royalizing]

[ The more she watches, the more her anger slowly gives away to a tight anxiety and fear in her chest, though for or of what, she's not entirely sure. Is she afraid that they'll all be dead within two days? Or is she afraid for him, the boy who has caused this and yet is the farthest thing from being triumphant? Perhaps... it's this entirely too familiar scene.

The last time she was faced with a hysterical boy in denial, just after a horrifying catastrophe that led to the deaths of innocents, she'd scorned him and turned her back on him. Wrote him off as someone too self-absorbed and too immature to claim responsibility for the blood on his hands. (But then, it was the actions of someone who never meant for it to happen...)

There's too much emotion and frantic thoughts in her head to think rationally, which makes it a struggle to reign in her temper, but she doesn't yell at him or slap him as is her instinct. ]

Ciel! Get a hold of yourself!

[ Her voice is high and desperate sounding, and not at all befitting a princess, but she has so much more to worry about right now. She takes an involuntary step towards him. ]

[cheats]

[ Her high voice cuts through the fog of his madness, and he starts, almost falling over himself as he suddenly seems to realize that Natalia is there at all. He looks like a frightened animal in a cage, and he backs up and away from Natalia like he's afraid of her. ]

I— This isn't...

[ But it's all he starts to say, and he just shakes his head before he looks to the display in the center of the circus tent before retching again, though this time nothing comes up, at least. ]

[royalizing]

[ She stops short when he seems to skitter away from her. Is he... afraid of her? It's so absurd, that he should be afraid of her when the most brutality here has been from the VIPs. But his reaction definitely shoves away the personal comparison, because he's so much younger and so much more frightened than indignant.

So Natalia swallows and tries to lower her voice. ]

I'm not going to hurt you. Please, I just need... [ What does she need? She needs all of this to have been some awful nightmare, and wake up safe and snug in her bed at the castle. ]

... I need to talk to you.

[cheats]

I can't—

[ He bows forward on his hands and knees after he stops retching, hiding the view before him, because every time he sees the scene before him, it's too hard to distinguish between what's really in front of him and what's long past. Is this the room of the ceremony or a circus tent? Are the cages empty, or is he inside it? Or is it that he's on the altar, or is that Oz?

He can't discern it, or maybe it's that he can't remember it. It's both and neither. And that gets Ciel's shoulders to shake in a way that's immediately obvious that he's starting to cry. ]

Please— Someone save us, anyone...

[ So it should also be clear enough that Natalia won't be able to talk to him here. She'll have to take him outside of the tent. ]