Frat House Gone Wrong, UC-Sunnydale, Saturday Evening
Warren
Warren's hand was flexing as he made his way down the hallway, claws bared and wings spread a little in an instinctive effort to make himself look bigger than he was. He could only hear any other activity in the house distantly, screams muffled at the end of corridors that seemed to stretch on forever, full of cheap plastic Halloween decorations that snagged at his feathers all the same as he walked by.
He made his way along that hallway, running one hand along the wall claws-first, hoping to find some seam, some catch under the wallpaper that he could claw at and open up. Logic dictated that there had to be some escape route, somewhere, in this house without windows. But there wasn't. There was just that hallway straight ahead, full of muffled screams and air that grew increasingly stale the more he tried to breathe it. The walls themselves seemed to be a little closer to one another with every step, but he pressed onward resolutely until he realized that his wings were scraping against them on either side.
"Bad idea. Bad idea, Worthington," he muttered to himself, taking a step back and rounding on his heel the instant his shoulders pressed against solid wall.
The hallway that had been behind him was gone, and Warren found himself staring at a dead end that might as well have been there all along. He swallowed, stumbling backwards a few more steps, Halloween decor tearing feathers from his wings by the handful as they strained against the walls on either side.
It was a desperate gasp for air that he loosed when his back slammed, hard, against something solid again. He tried to stretch and found that he couldn't, wings crammed in around his shoulders, ceiling barely an inch above his head, claws scrabbling desperately against plaster and bookshelves and cobwebs and feathers and it was all closing in until there was no difference between one thing and the next, just that space, tight on all sides and smaller still, crushing and suffocating and restraining him and he couldn't breathe, could only pull his ragged wings in around himself and ball himself up on the floor and choke on air that wasn't left at all and slip into madness for absolute lack of sky.
He couldn't move.
He couldn't breathe.
Tara
Karla wasn't in the room Tara had darted blindly into.
No one was. No one and nothing, she added to herself -- the space was the size to have been a bedroom once, but it was utterly empty.
She sat down for a minute, comforted to get away from the screams to collect herself. She hadn't brought any magical supplies to the party, but she knew there had to be things she could do if she could just focus. Locator spell, maybe, or something to bind whatever was making people scream that way. She'd just begun to come up with a game plan when she heard voices dimly through the door.
"Guess we spooked her into running off, huh?" The boy sounded like Warren.
"We did," the girl -- Karla? -- agreed. "Thank God. All that pretending to be friends with her for years. Some people can't take a hint."
"And it's bizarre," not-Warren, Tara was trying hard to believe that this couldn't be him, added. "I mean, who'd want to be friends with a freak like that? Even her own family doesn't want her."
Not-Karla clucked her tongue. "They did everything they could to help her, but the poor ugly thing's got demon in her. Nobody's ever going to love her." Her voice was getting softer now, as if she was moving past the room. "Come on. Our real friends are waiting."
Tara was crying as she tried to turn the doorknob. On the third shove, it finally gave way, and she stumbled off. Maybe she'd find the way out by chance; maybe she'd die. She had a hard time caring which would happen.
Karla
The hallway stretched out into darkness only occasionally broken by flickering lights. One flash illuminated a streak of what looked like blood on the floor leading to a closed door. Karla's heart jumped as another flash lit up a wall that appeared to be screaming--but that was just a trick of the shadows, right?
Either way, she wasn't seeing anything that looked like a way out from here. The dooe with a bloodstain should probably get some attention, but she wasn't keen on opening random doors without Warren and Tara around. "Guys?" she called through the wall. "I'm coming back through, okay?"
Nothing. Not even muffled sounds of agreement.
"Guys?" No matter. She'd just pass through the wall and--
Karla bounced off the wall, blinking at it in surprise. Huh? How was she still on the same side as before? Shaking her head, she tried again and got with the same non-result. And again. And again, this time with a running start that ended with her bouncing backwards to the ground with plaster dust in her hair. No matter how many times she tried, her Craft just wouldn't respond. And no matter how hard she banged on the wall or how loud she yelled, she didn't get a response from the other side.
She wasn't sure what was more frightening, the absolute silence or the way her Sapphire just sat as a dead weight around her neck. "Tara! Warren! Someone, anyone, answer me!"
Nothing.
A sharp sting on her neck distracted her from her yelling. She glanced over and saw a palm-sized black widow skittering down her arm. She might have bitched about the authenticity of the creature when it had been made of rubber, but this spider was very, very realistic, down to the bead of venom that dripped off its mandibles and burned where it landed. Karla had just enough time to think, it's a good thing I'm immune to their venom before a wave of dizziness sent her crumpling against the wall.
"S'not how this works..." she mumbled, her vision blurring. Dammit, the wall-face was back and silently screaming again. Also, her hands were melting and the ceiling was dripping black ooze. That couldn't be good. "I 'tabolize...s'not even a hallucy spider..."
A few minutes of concentrated effort got her to her feet and lurching down the hallway. It kept expanding and contracting as if it were breathing, getting claustrophobically tight and then widening out until she felt tiny in comparison. With every step, she tried to access her Craft, begging, pleading, screaming at it to work. But to no avail--she couldn't create a witchlight to light her way down the melting corridor. Couldn't Heal the bite that shouldn't have affected her in the first place. Couldn't pass through the wall or call up a shield or create a psychic link to her friends. Why wasn't anything working right? Why was her right arm going numb? Why was the darkness full of shrieks and children crying and males leering at her from dim corners?
She had to get out. Had to find Warren and Tara. Had to get her Sapphire working again. Had to had to had to....
Tara
Tara's heart was still pounding as she stumbled somehow up a flight of stairs. She sank to the floor of the room she found herself in at the end of it as soon as she'd shut the door behind her, barely noticing the rune painted on the floor.
She wanted to look around for her friends (if they were still even her friends, she didn't know), but she was so shaken that she needed a moment just to stop crying.
Karla
Karla had no idea where she was or where she was going. She was barely together enough to realize she was staggering at all, never mind actually making her way somewhere. As it was, she was mostly careening from one surface to another as the black widow venom in her veins made her vision blur and her mind play tricks.
Or maybe it was the house playing tricks. Karla couldn't tell anymore.
The surface she was leaning against opened beneath her (behind her? which way was up? down? where was the enemy's gate?) and she spilled into another large area filled with moans and cries. She huddled on the floor, begging for her Sapphire to come back to life, pleading with the universe to keep her from being so helpless.
Warren
Warren wasn't moving. He couldn't move, he couldn't breathe. The world had closed in on all sides, he was buried alive in the walls of the house and there was no way out, none, and all there was to do was ball himself up even more tightly and wait and not even holding his breath was going to let him preserve the air because there wasn't any.
Except that the hallway that Warren had curled up in was a room, and there was space on all sides, and he was gasping for air and there was no way that he was going to be able to catch his breath ever again. None.
Tara
Gasping. Tara heard someone gasping. She glanced up and over to Warren and Karla, not sure she could trust what she saw. Were they really upset, or were they play-acting again?
"Are you guys pretending again?" she asked, though her nervous stammer and the fact she'd been crying clouded several of the words. "It's not funny."
Karla
Karla whimpered, clutching at her Sapphire. "Run," she mumbled towards the floor. "Can't protect you. Can't protect anyone. 'M useless."
Warren
"Nowhere to run," Warren protested, barely a mumble, afraid to use too much of that precious air. "Walls. It's all walls, on all sides. Can't run... Can't fly..."
Tara
"Really not funny," Tara muttered, drawing her legs close to her chest. "I knew nobody liked me, why would they, but this..."
Karla
"I'm nothing," Karla moaned. "Nothing. Worthless. Can't save anyone. Can't do anything. Everyone will leave me. They always do."
Warren
Warren furrowed his brow a little. People were doing an awful lot of despairing about whether anyone loved them or not, considering they were all buried alive in the walls.
In fact, the fact that they both fit in there with him was kind of...
... Of...
He glanced up tentatively. A peek, even at a wall, wasn't going to hurt anything. But it wasn't walls, it was a wide-open room, and he wasn't smothering in it. He was staring at two of the closest people to him in the whole damn multiverse, breaking up because nobody wanted them?
He didn't speak right away, no. But he did, almost painfully slowly, pull himself to his feet and sit himself down between the two girls, stretching his wings out and wrapping one around the shoulders of either of them.
"That's not true," he murmured, his heart still racing in his chest and his lungs still struggling to breathe. "Neither of you are worthless, I'm not going to leave either of you. You're my family. You're all I have, and I love you both." In different ways, maybe, but it was true enough. "Stop saying things like that, both of you. It's not true."
Tara
"Hunh?" Tara was so deep in her own worst fears that it took her a long moment to recognize Warren's sincerity for what it was. "I love you both too," she said, still sniffling. "I -- I heard you, though. Saying I was ugly and you hated me and --"
She cut herself off, rubbed her fingers roughly under her eyes as realization hit. "The house was playing with us again."
Karla
"How can you still love me?" Karla asked, peering up at him, her face wan and tear-streaked. "I'm a rubbish Queen, got kicked out before I was properly even ruling, and now I don't even have my Craft and I'm--"
Tara's realization cut through the fog of self-pity and terror. "Wait, what?!"
Karla was going to cut a bitch. Just as soon as Warren reassured her again and she proved her Sapphire still worked.
Warren
Warren was pretty thankful that they both managed to snap out of that. He was still shaking like a leaf, feathers rustling in spite of his best efforts to stay quiet, but his heart would stop racing sooner or later. He was just happy the girls were coming around.
He'd probably talk to both of them about their feelings of inadequacy later, separately. He knew what it was like, being not good enough. It had been the story of his life. He wasn't afraid of it, not quite in the sort of way that would chase him down in here.
"We need to get out of here," he whispered, giving Tara a squeeze and kissing Karla on the cheek. "This place knows us too well. It's getting to us."
Tara
"It tore us apart once. Next time it -- it might stick.," Tara agreed. As she got calmer, the stammer dropped out of her voice. (Not that she was going to be truly calm, not as long as they were in the house.)
She leaned into Warren, eyes traveling about the red-lit room. She didn't see a way out, and everything seemed to be normal party decor except --
"Rune," she said, tilting her head. "On the floor. Do you guys see it?"
She didn't trust her eyes.
Karla
"We need to stick together," Karla said, voice still small and almost little girlish. "I'm sorry I separated us before. Won't happen again." Especially not with the white-knuckled grip she had on Warren's hand.
She looked around for the thing Tara had mentioned, getting momentarily distracted by a waiter (the party was catered?) muttering about being invisible. Okay, good to know it wasn't just them.
"You mean the ugly painting that looks like a drunk tattoo?"
Karla, you weren't endearing yourself to the denizens of the underworld.
Warren
"Please tell me that's just another ugly Halloween decoration? Maybe?" Warren glanced around the room, taking in the sight of probably another half-dozen people all huddled up around them. "If that thing is what pulled everyone in here, I vote we get away from it again."
Distance was awesome. And all of the frat partygoers were starting to kind of have him antsy, huddled up or not. Showing his wings tonight had seemed smarter earlier, when he didn't think his feathers were going to be prickling behind him.
Tara
"It's real," Tara said slowly, and stood so she could get a better look, frowning thoughtfully over at the other guests who still seemed locked in their own private hells.
"Um -- Gaelic. Dark magic." Well, duh. "All I know is, it's not anything anybody needs to mess with."
Karla
"So, breaking it would be bad?" Karla slowly eased her foot back from where she'd been about to stomp through it.
Warren
"We don't even know what it says," Warren pointed out, frowning at it. His Gaelic was not exactly up to par. "Let's focus on finding our way out of here, or making sure people are safe, or... something..."
The creepy floor-drawing was giving him a case of the jitters. He was pretty okay with the prospect of getting some distance from it.
Tara
"Well," Tara said, looking to a cluster of students crying in a corner, "I don't think anyone else is going anywhere..."
Which was horrible, yes, but it just made it more urgent that the people with powers fixed this.
She frowned down at the floor again. "Oh, maybe whoever painted this was copying it," she speculated. "Is there a book or anything somewhere?"
Karla
"You mean like that book over there?" Karla said, pointing. "It looks pretty out of place for a frat house."
Considering it was a book and all. Karla's opinion of frat boys hadn't really gone up with this party. Carefully stepping around the design, she snagged the book and flipped through it until she found an image that resembled it--if drawn by someone without much in the way of artistic merit.
Dujae would be appalled.
She showed them the book and shrugged. "No good," she said. "Just more of that crazy writing."
Warren
"And I don't suppose they have anything even resembling a Gaelic-to-English dictionary sitting around, huh?"
Well. That was pretty crappy luck.
Tara
Tara shook her head. "Maybe? Except ... I kind of don't want to spend extra time here to ransack the bookshelves."
She could faintly hear a girl shrieking Get them off me!, and shuddered at it.
Karla
"Look," Karla said, pointing at a bright-red something that had emerged from a wall. She took a second to assure herself that it was red fabric and not blood before dismissing the person wearing it from her mind completely. "Maybe a way out?"
Warren
"If it's a way out, we take it," Warren decided, letting... Red Riding Hood or whoever it was push by them. "All in favor?"
His hand was already up, thanks.
Tara
"It might not be safe," Tara sighed, "but ---"
Did she need to do more than put her hand up, too?
The blonde Red Riding Hood looked passingly familiar, but not in a way Tara was going to give a lot of thought to right now.
Ugly demon dude
Karla flipped the page and then held open the book to show them something.
"Does it matter?" she asked. "I think the rune belongs to this guy--Gachnar?--and I'd really rather not meet him up close and personal if we don't have to."
Warren
"Then that's the way we go," Warren replied, keeping an eye on both girls as he headed back to where the girl in the hood had come from. "Ladies' choice. I can go first, or I can cover your backs."
He was pretty easygoing that way, just so long as there were no more crushing walls.
Tara
"I'll go first," Tara offered. "It's my world, so --"
She wasn't even sure she had a rational ending to that sentence, other than how she, selfishly, really didn't want to be the last out. She closed her eyes and scooted down into the vent system.
Karla
"Keep your eyes closed and your wings tucked," Karla advised softly, her gaze darting from Warren to the vent and back. "One hand on my back. I'll lead you through."
Warren
Warren eyed the vent for a moment, and then nodded resolutely, resting his hand on her back and pulling his wings in so tightly around him that they ached.
A few years without a harness made keeping his wings firmly tucked in against his back into an ordeal more difficult than he'd anticipated.
"Lead on," he murmured, closing his eyes. "I'm right behind you."
[OOC: Scenario and Scooby cameos from "Fear, Itself." Preplayed with the stupendous glacial-witch and not_a_parakeet. Post 2 of 3.]