> █████, Long Travel Train SrTc-22, Car 10 Hall.
> 2nd of New Conception, 1316;
> █:██ ████ Time.
Slowly as they watch for any change, the miasma begins to clear out, and what used to be a Weeping Tree is now only a ghostly figure that sparks violently on an irregular basis. Karter, Ari, and Aethel simply look at eachother, their faces visibly unsure of what actions to take.
“Nothing seems to be happening, and the train is beginning to clear up… would you consider this… a majority success? The— uh, the weird afterimage notwithstanding, of course.” taking the initiative, Aethel speaks.
Shaking his head, Ari expresses, his voice in some kind of hurry, “I really do not concur with standing around here— with us standing around here, specifically.”
“Wait, is… is the damn thing growing?” Karter interrupts them, gesturing to inside the cabin.
Just as Karter says, the two can make out a faint expansion; the afterimage is spreading outward ever so slightly by the second.
Ari looks to both Karter and Aethel, he taps his feet in a repeated motion, saying, “We should leave right bloody now.”
Suddenly a door is heard cracking open, Fi and Nerva appear beside them, and both visibly concerned. Ari’s eyes widen in the instant that Karter walks through the barrier, and as Aethel follows, only Ari remains in the shield. He turns his attention back to the afterimage.
“What is going on, is zis operation complete?” asks Fi, attention all over the place as she inspects the surroundings.
Nerva asks another question, “...And also, I’d like to know about the barrier, why were you guys in there?”
“Hrm, Aethel… I cannot believe I am saying this but take the lead for now, I am far beyond my wits end.” Karter puts a hand on his face, dragging it down slowly as he speaks.
Aethel answers, scratching his head. “Honestly, me too… so… let’s just show them.” he starts off towards the cabin and Karter nods at Nerva and Fi before following.
Walking over to Ari, who has been silently observing the thing, the group looks upon the afterimage. It is not exorbitantly bigger, but it is certainly growing, and shows no signs of stopping. Its color is somewhat prismatic, and the energy crackling around it is the same; this energy is distorted, it appears like waves and spirals in the air.
“I’ve never seen such a thing in my life— you Fi?” Nerva takes a step back at the sight before drawing slightly closer.
Fi shakes her head and answers, “Neizer ‘ave I… it would look ra’zer beautiful if it were not so… disconcerting.”
“I, for one, am not so taken by its look— though it is intriguing, I cannot deny that.” Ari shakes his head slowly.
Karter groans, turning to the group before speaking, “Well… the only thing for sure is that we need to make a decision quickly, this rain seems intent to keep running down on us, and we all know how cold it is outside right now.”
“Hold that thought, I’m going to go retrieve my journal and camera— it’s imperative that one of us document this. Oh and also a change of clothes.” Nerva says as she tugs at her soaking cloak and jacket.
As she mentions that last bit, the rest of the party finally begin to feel the harsh bite of wet attire, and as Nerva leaves it seems Fi has the same idea. Ari, Karter, and Aethel look at each other again for what feels like the hundredth time; they silently agree on something as Ari and Karter go outside while Aethel heads back towards car eighteen.
In a few minutes, Karter and Ari are funnelling the civilians back into the train, cautioning everyone to stay away from the entirety of car ten; the two men are the last to enter. But on entering, finally having the chance to grab a change of clothes, they regroup with Aethel, Fi, and Nerva to document the strange afterimage.
Their new attire is not so complex: Aethel wears a vintage looking overcoat, a white shirt, and slacks; Karter wears a tactical coat, military tee-shirt, and cargos; Fi wears an ornate petticoat, a blouse, and dress pants; Nerva wears some kind of bomber jacket, a sweatshirt, and jeans; and Ari wears an extremely upscale, bespoke suit and a new mask.
As they meet in car ten’s hall, most of the group equips themselves with notebooks, cameras, and an array of tools to measure the energy output of the unstable anomaly. Looking into the cabin, the thing permeates the entire area, an outcome nowhere close to what they were expecting from the previous slow growth.
In freely moving about at such a large quantity the distortion is completely visible, creating complete and mesmerizing swirls in the air, and coating the room with an oily sheen. Not only that, but the room’s light is extremely harsh, not quite to the point of blinding, yet still enough to feel straining on the eyes. This causes the group to turn away.
“This does not incite any confidence, darlings— even under my mask that light is rather annoying.” Ari is the first to speak as they all look out the window, away from the unusual luminosity.
Nerva rummages around her belongings as she assures, “Hold on, let me bring out my meter, see if we can’t figure out just how much energy is coming off that thing.”
“I ‘ave a feeling zis shall be quite a lot, even wizout a measure it feels quite overwhelming… much like ze miasma before but less tiring and more irritating.” throwing her two cents in, Fi tries to sneak glances back but always recoils.
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Bringing out a complicated looking device, Nerva fixes her view downward at the meter, and then approaches the room. In one step forward the meter maxes out, but only for a second or less, then it seems to shut off entirely. Nerva leans in towards the tool, some kind of effort to make sense of the situation before she turns to the window again.
Nerva speaks in the most visible disbelief, “Uh… it just brought it to full capacity before killing the damn thing.”
“Excuse me?” is the only thing Karter can say at this moment.
Nerva does not bother looking at Karter while she responds, “You heard me. It completely overloaded the sensors and fried the electronics… whatever is going on in there is expending so much energy that it kills even our gear.”
“Zat is… well I was about to say impossible, but I am sure we can all feel zis power behind us, no?” says Fi, shutting her eyes and using her hands to cover them.
Karter, staring intently out the window, says in a monotone voice, “Evacuate the train.”
“Well the thing is, yes, we really should— but I have a feeling we’re going to run into problems with everyone else. Especially after they were in the rain for that long… and now they’ve all changed clothes… and the curtain man is stowed away in the storage room…” Aethel raises a few points while doing the same thing as Karter.
Karter shakes his head violently, the monotone turning to impatience, “Fuck it, throw them out if you have to, the damn thing is growing in power— we can all feel it.”
The anomaly was certainly getting stronger and more dominating over the senses, and in the instant that Nerva tried to take her camera out, point it behind her, and snap a blind photo… the camera too was fried.
“Well there goes that… Shit, Ari come with me, Fi go with Aethel— Karter… do whatever you feel is right— let’s go get everyone out of he—”
Without warning or build up the train starts moving at an accelerated pace, completely staggering the party— except for Fi and Karter— but even then, the remaining three: Aethel, Nerva, and Ari are shot out of place violently. Karter is able to catch Ari who was the closest to him, and the same story goes for Fi and Nerva, but Aethel…
Aethel stumbles backwards into the room, much to the distress of the rest, as he touches down and entangles with the energy— off goes a ruinous detonation! The energy erupts outwards and fills the corridors, it hits the entire party with such a force… yet from the outside looking in… there is no visible damage…?
But within the radius, which was the whole of car ten, all the lights are utterly blinding. Disorienting does not even come close to the situation around them, it is as if an entire crate of flashbangs went off, and along with that, a thousand bolts of what feels like lightning surging through all their bodies, arcing between every one of them.
All of them lash out in an agonizing choir of screams, the sounds reaching all throughout the train, and a few civilians close by immediately enter the cabin. But… reaching it, the place looks pristine, normal even— as if nothing at all is cause for the hair raising screams.
Those who enter only find the party lying in an almost deathlike fashion on the floor, the only signs of their life being faint pulses, the kind so hard to register unless one is ready to pay attention to even the minutest detail. Moreover, their skin seems to shine with a prismatic gloss, and their veins are glowing with a white light.
But in terms of positions, Aethel sprawls out in the cabin, Karter sits by the window, Ari with his head on the outer cabin wall, Fi lying longway in the hall, and Nerva with her back against the doorframe. The good samaritans among the passengers coordinate with the staff in order to safeguard them all, placing them inside one cabin each.
> █████, █████, █████.
> ███ of █████, ███;
> █:██ ████ Time.
As they lie in their, from all outside view, inexplicable comas, it is in the midst of their own perception where they awaken in darkness. Aethel opens his eyes to just that, a dark void that stretches for who-knows-how-long, and as he turns to his side he sees the rest of them coming to.
“Fi, are you alright!?” in the instant of seeing them, Aethel runs towards Fi, crouching beside her as he exclaims.
Breaking through her drowsiness, Fi starts calm before her jaw completely drops, “Mmm… uhh— Ae- Aezel? What ‘as ‘appened, are you okay? The last zing I remember…”
Fi looks around in several frantic motions, Aethel attempts to calm her down but she nearly knocks him over, then grabbing on to him, she climbs to her feet and looks around even more. At last she sees the rest, and with that she orders Aethel to check on Karter, while she herself begins moving towards Nerva.
“Psst! Karter, you okay? Wake up, we’re in a pretty bad situation.” Aethel shakes Karter lightly while asking.
Shooting up from his position, Karter screams, “GRAH! Fuck— wh- what just happened?! Am I dead!? Are we dead?!”
“AH! Uh… um, no… darling I do not think that to be the case, but we certainly are far from awake… or physically awake to be specific… well I think at least.” Karter’s scream wakes up Ari who immediately tries to interject with his own opinion.
Nerva calls out, falling on her knees as Fi gently steadies her, “...Just, what the… what is this place?”
Taking another survey of the environment, they are certainly standing on something, they just cannot see it. Light does not seem to be the issue either for they can see each other clearly as if under a clinical bulb. Aethel’s eyes dart from side to side in quick succession as he checks, then double checks, and then even triple checks the area.
“Ari, are you sure we aren’t just dead and in the void?” Aethel then looks to Ari, eyes looking somewhat pleading.
Ari matches Aethel’s gaze as he responds, “Well I do not like to consider us dead right now, but only because my ideas of death are far too different to this, I was expecting something more… fantastical, or maybe even so incomprehensible that we would not know we were dead… apologies, darling.”
Another surprise for the day, because in the blink of an eye the floor reveals itself as checkered tiles, and the bounds of this strange place are now set. The party finds themselves within a laboratory— an alchemical laboratory, or so it seems with all the formula papers, apocryphal books, odd ingredients, and old but sophisticated workstations.
There are windows but beyond them lie gears akin to those inside clock towers, above them on the roof is a hanging white gem, the walls are made of brass and other arcane adjacent material, and in the air is something that can only be described as the essence of the world floating freely about.
“Tis that thou all didst survive, yet perchance for how long, and if the answer is long enough, therein I then must ponder if thou all wilt wish to… at all?” a rather eccentric voice addresses the party, the origin lying nowhere the mind can reasonably think, for it resounds all around them but never too close to make out.
Footsteps are playing out from all directions at once before all culminating on a grand staircase, leading from an unknown place above them, a figure slowly stalks down the steps…