Alkaid
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Player Character
Posts: 544
Trainer Class: 
Player Name: Laurence Anderson
OOC Username: Akivili
Arena Points: 10
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Post by Alkaid on Aug 10, 2024 11:52:36 GMT 9
Remember the rumors?
About nobody being allowed to wander out to this strange, unknown place.
(Due to how things had played out differently; you no longer remember if back home Mistra had been unlocked. That was… that was a conscious choice on your end to mostly forget about the pain, the insanity that happened when the EU server was still a ‘hospitable’ place.)
However, you find yourself drawn to this strange location—like there’s something telling you to explicitly head out here, to this strange and unknown place—
The area that the North American server calls ‘Mistra’.
(Maybe it has something to do with the ‘cursed’ injury on the back of your hand? You just flippantly shove those thoughts aside.)
Accompanied by Muninn, the Murkrow, the two of you slip through the cracks and head straight—
Into the unknown.
550 / 600 |
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Alkaid
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Player Character
Posts: 544
Trainer Class:
Player Name: Laurence Anderson
OOC Username: Akivili
Arena Points: 10
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Post by Alkaid on Aug 11, 2024 3:36:47 GMT 9
You’ve heard the rumors from the rest of the player base that strange things happen when someone stays for too long in the corruption, but what exactly happens differed from player to player.
The common theme among all of them was that they featured stories and harrowing tales about how Mistra literally brought out the worst in everyone. Deep-seated fears, terrors of the night, phobias…
To be honest, you were pretty confident that you didn’t have any.
(But deep inside, you knew you were lying to yourself—anything and everything you experienced back in the EU servers was actually a mix of the good and the evil. Moreso on the evil, but we’ll get to that in a bit.)
Well, confident enough you weren’t going to see anything from your own personal worst nightmares in this place.
You look over in the direction where Muninn the Murkrow accompanied you, but for some reason they look like they’re glitching in and out of your field of view—like they’re only partially present within the space.
Guess what everyone told you about this place was true.
(You hear it. It sounds distorted, at first. The longer you linger in here, though, the more the unintelligible voice becomes clearer.)
You’re tempted to ask Muninn if they can hear something—you’re not sure they’re going to understand—but you remember, you remember that you didn’t own a Murkrow or any of their evolutionary lines back there…
(Wait, why is the voice… why do the words sound like Sicilian instead of—no, wait, why does that voice sound like… was it Alioth, or was it Mizar? More than half of Capolavoro are from Sicily, and you know that the remaining half of the guild’s members are from the mainland, yourself included. Wait… what are they saying?)
500 / 600 |
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Alkaid
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Player Character
Posts: 544
Trainer Class:
Player Name: Laurence Anderson
OOC Username: Akivili
Arena Points: 10
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Post by Alkaid on Aug 14, 2024 3:56:05 GMT 9
#s://c~l3n~co/i/S58J92~png The longer you stay out here, the more… the more you feel tiny little bugs crawling under your skin.
Is… is your mind playing tricks on you? You can barely hear Muninn’s voice cawing at you because of the way the itchy, perpetually prickly feeling is spreading from the tips of your fingernails, crawling upward through your flesh and through your body and—
It’s like the place is taking root inside you—and the strange ‘thing’ in your blood is reacting to it; the wound on the back of your right hand throbbing with each passing second as the itchy, prickly feeling continues to spread all over your body.
You can’t tell, but you’re already panicking. The Murkrow’s voice is too far away for you to comprehend, to hear—you look down and see that your hands are literally peeling away right before your eyes and the blood is pouring from the fleshless digits, the muscle and bone visible.
You don’t realize it, but your legs go out from under you as the awful sensation of being ripped from your own flesh and bones consumes you as the darkness sinks down all around you.
450 / 600 |
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Alkaid
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Player Character
Posts: 544
Trainer Class:
Player Name: Laurence Anderson
OOC Username: Akivili
Arena Points: 10
|
Post by Alkaid on Aug 14, 2024 4:11:27 GMT 9
#s://b~l3n~co/i/S58CW9~png You wake up.
You wake up; but instead of being accompanied by Muninn the Murkrow, you realize something has changed—this isn’t Mistra, this is…
“Home…” you mutter quietly as you stand up; and meet the eyes of a familiar Dusknoir, red burning eye looking down at you like nothing had happened.
‘Took you long enough, Benet. Everyone’s waiting for you,’ you hear the familiar lilt of the spectral companion speak up, and you pull yourself to your feet… you could fucking swear that there was a darkness in the back of your head, but—you’re here, you’re home; and you’re back where everyone’s waiting for you.
Mizar looking all coy like nothing’s happened; Dubhe the eternal dumbass; Merak with that stupid-ass smirk; Phecda with that sly grin on their face nobody can ever tell what they’re thinking…
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” another voice cuts through the space—and you turn around to see…
Alioth?
Only, wait.
Why does Alioth’s voice sound like Evan’s… what’s going on?
You panic.
You’re very sure that Evan hasn’t played or even heard of Unovr, and yet… you could swear that Alioth’s voice—no, you know you met Evan in the States, not in Italy—wasn’t Alioth your last Italian ex, that you both mutually decided to be just friends since it didn’t work out between you two?
Wasn’t Alioth’s identity Leonn?
Wait, what’s happening?!
“Honestly, Benet, you look tired… what happened to you? You just. Collapsed on us. Galehault’s all worried about you, too,” the mish-mashed ‘convolution’ of Leonn and Evan, speaking through Alioth’s image, continues to address you.
You look down and you see a Scolipede… but wait, what’s happening to Galehault?
Why does it look like his skin’s peeling away, too?!
‘We thought you were dead,’ you hear the Scolipede’s voice—only you know, in the deepest, darkest recesses of your mind, that Galehault was mostly non-verbal and relied on your Dusknoir to speak on their behalf…
‘We thought you died.’
400 / 600 |
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Alkaid
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Player Character
Posts: 544
Trainer Class:
Player Name: Laurence Anderson
OOC Username: Akivili
Arena Points: 10
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Post by Alkaid on Aug 14, 2024 4:46:55 GMT 9
#s://b~l3n~co/i/S58CW9~png “M-me? Died? A-are you out of your minds?! I’m right here! I—”
The anomalies continue—you know that in your home guild, Capolavoro, the default language was Italian—you were one of the few that could speak multiple languages—why was everyone speaking perfect English all of a sudden?!
Your mind’s in overdrive; though you take another look behind ‘Alioth’ and see that the members you frequently traveled with—Mizar, Merak, Dubhe, Phecda—being encased in ice and then shattering right before your very eyes.
“Ali—Leonn!” you yell, gesturing frantically behind him.
“They—they’re all… they’re all gone!”
“What are you saying, Benet? They’re all alive… alive, and well. Maybe you hit your head too hard.”
The way they spoke those words made your own blood run cold.
You knew, that out of everyone else, Alioth was the one who stepped up and took care of most everyone else (yes, even you) after every sortie you’d complete; Alioth the mother hen; Alioth, the one who would sacrifice everything to bring all of you back from the brink—
“This… this isn’t you, Leonn! What are you saying?! Turn around! Look—look behind—” you stammer, hands still shaking; and then you hear another sound.
Something splitting, like an egg being cracked open.
“You did hit your head too hard, you know… did you forget?”
“F-forget… forget what?” you answer; though deep inside you already know what the answer is going to be; you dreaded hearing anyone saying it—
“Did you forget, how you left all of us… all of us behind… to the Eternal Freeze?”
“What—no! I didn’t! We joined the Rebellion, remember?! We lost Alcor, and Mizar first to that blasted ‘Noble Court’, and then everyone else started falling the moment the all-consuming ice began attacking everyone—” you stammer out, the words trembling as you feel a heavy lump sink into your throat.
Alioth’s visage looks like it’s cracking. Huge, spider-like cracks are spreading along the surface, the voice getting more distorted the longer you linger.
350 / 600 |
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Alkaid
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Player Character
Posts: 544
Trainer Class:
Player Name: Laurence Anderson
OOC Username: Akivili
Arena Points: 10
|
Post by Alkaid on Aug 14, 2024 4:56:43 GMT 9
#s://b~l3n~co/i/S58CW9~png ‘You left us to die.’
‘You said you wouldn’t leave us behind, Benet.’
‘Why did you go back on your word?’
The Dusknoir and the Scolipede press in on you as well; you take a closer look at Galehault and to your terror—you can see the dual-type’s skin peeling away; revealing their innards, open for the world to see.
‘You said you would always come back for us,’ the Scolipede continued; half their scaly chitin hanging off their head; looking very much like how a crushed watermelon did—bleeding freely, without a care in the world.
‘You lied.’
The two voices of your companion Pokémon continue to press down around you; the Dusknoir’s features distorting the close the spectral Ghost-type became as they approached, the hands warping and twisting before—
Before they close around your neck.
300 / 600 |
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Alkaid
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Player Character
Posts: 544
Trainer Class:
Player Name: Laurence Anderson
OOC Username: Akivili
Arena Points: 10
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Post by Alkaid on Aug 14, 2024 5:08:35 GMT 9
#s://c~l3n~co/i/S58J92~png “Nero, what are you saying—” you stammer out before those spectral hands; colder than death, grip your neck.
No matter how hard you try to fight off the Dusknoir’s grip, the hands only hang on even tighter—determined to crush the air out of your windpipe.
“Ne—ro, p-plea—se,” you gasp, hands scrambling wildly as you try to throw off the terrifying Pokémon whose red eye is now staring right at you.
Right through you.
The shudder wracks your body long before you feel it; and for some reason you feel the back of your right hand suddenly throb painfully—what’s going on?!
Your mind is desperately trying to come to terms with the terrible sights before you—
Galehault the Scolipede; whose head had gotten crushed from a powerful impact while saving you from being destroyed by falling chunks of frozen rubble.
Nero the Dusknoir; acting all erratically—while you know that the spectral Pokémon has his own psychotic moments, none were as bad as this—
“Ne—ro!” you desperately cry, still struggling, still fighting to throw off the heavy weight of the spectral limbs very much intent on crushing the life out of you.
Your blood had already run cold, but this—this freezing feeling spreading through your veins, caused by this phantom pain on the back of your right hand—you have no idea what’s real and what isn’t anymore—
“And yet here you are. Benetnasch the coward. Benetnasch the fearful. Benetnasch the traitor,” the warped, distorted voice of ‘Alioth’ rings out over the cold, crushing grip that the Dusknoir has on you.
“You left us all to die.”
250 / 600 |
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Alkaid
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Player Character
Posts: 544
Trainer Class:
Player Name: Laurence Anderson
OOC Username: Akivili
Arena Points: 10
|
Post by Alkaid on Aug 14, 2024 5:47:15 GMT 9
#s://c~l3n~co/i/S58kDo~png The darkness swims at the edge of your vision; yet you still struggle; trying to throw off the impossibly heavy weight of the Dusknoir’s hands from your neck.
“I—I d-didn’t—” you wheeze out; the frantic struggling only getting worse the longer the Dusknoir’s hands were crushing the air out of you; the phantom ‘pain’ from the back of your right hand—
Wait…
Right hand?
Somehow, a tiny piece of yourself can recall(?) that this… this pain is…
And then, the shattering noise catches you off-guard.
The cracks that had appeared on Alioth’s ‘visage’ peel away; revealing nothing but blood and innards that instantly freezes on contact with the icy air permeating around you; swirling as it tries to catch you in its grip.
“N-no,” you gasp; yet you can feel your arms giving up the ghost; it’s like you’re welcoming the impending inevitability of what awaits you on the other side… the other side, of the darkness.
“Join us… in the Noble Court.”
Your arms are slacking; the Dusknoir’s red eye piercing through your own gaze; you can feel your eyes fluttering shut as the last of your strength is leeched by the frigid cold you fought so hard against; the permafrost slithering in your veins as you feel your body become dead weight—
You feel your own body drop to the ground;
And
Shatter.
200 / 600 |
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Alkaid
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Player Character
Posts: 544
Trainer Class:
Player Name: Laurence Anderson
OOC Username: Akivili
Arena Points: 10
|
Post by Alkaid on Aug 17, 2024 3:26:33 GMT 9
#s://a~l3n~co/i/Sa5nHZ~png This was…
This was not how you remember that fateful day came to an end, back home.
You were practically the vanguard at that point, you distinctly remember—yelling at everyone to make a fucking run for it as the cold wave of eternal night had begun to spread—
Alcor, Mizar—
Then it was Merak and Phecda, taken out in a single blow.
Dubhe was smart for once; shoving Alioth and you out of the way before they were taken by the darkness as well.
You tried looking for the Pleaides, the seven ‘siblings’ who were part of Alioth’s ‘personal guard’, but all of their names on the guild list had blinked once and gone out—much in the way that everyone else who had fallen to the eternal night had been taken.
For a while it was just you two, running, running—running so much it was a miracle you both made it so far until you noticed… until you noticed that yours was the only name that was still blinking…
“Alioth? Alioth!” you remember screaming; before changing tactics, “Leonn! Where are you?!”
All of their names, on the guild list—blotted out with a very distinct status symbol you knew meant ‘FRZ’ in the older handheld games… were you… were you truly the last one?
The slippery, slick icy terrain then transformed into what felt like inky blackness; before eyes—multiple, multiple eyes of different hue and make… were all staring at you. It took a split-second to realize that all these eyes that were staring at you—
Was everyone’s eyes, judging you as you hadn’t fallen yet.
Everyone had been taken away, and you could feel the weight of every single pair boring into you, awaiting judgment.
The pressure to succumb to the frigid cold was too much; yet you knew there was still a way out—and even if you don’t like to admit it, you’d escaped from that fate by suddenly disconnecting just before your own name flashed and was taken from the same world that everyone else had…
This was all their fault.
Not Capolavoro’s.
Everyone else’s.
150 / 600 |
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Alkaid
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Player Character
Posts: 544
Trainer Class:
Player Name: Laurence Anderson
OOC Username: Akivili
Arena Points: 10
|
Post by Alkaid on Aug 17, 2024 3:39:22 GMT 9
#s://b~l3n~co/i/Sa5Y3i~png There was one day.
One day that you didn’t call Evan.
The one day you regret not reaching out to him and talking about… talking about all this.
The literal shockwaves of what had happened on the entire European server spread like wildfire across the few BBS boards you could find that talked about the game extensively; about how the ending of the Precipice Crown raid had literally changed the face of the server every single European player of Unovr called home.
The sun never rose that day in the game.
That day—was December 22, 2022.
You couldn’t bear to open the group chat that had been left in your care; the one where every single member of the guild that was technically under your command (as Aldebaran had apparently gotten themselves banned) was most probably yelling, screaming, crying, or just freaking out.
You didn’t want to open it, so you just watched as the notifications piled up in number.
Ping, ping, ping—
Some of the others had even tried contacting you outside of the group chat; but you chose to ignore them—because the aftermath of what happened had literally put every single player playing on edge.
You didn’t want to be in the middle of that fallout; you could take a pretty good guess that everyone, across every single major country that had a stake for the server’s future, were all pointing fingers at each other and blaming one another for letting the entire event happen.
Ping, ping, ping—
And yet you couldn’t bring yourself to open the notifications that continued to pile up. Yet… the one name you were curious about—
He didn’t send any messages. Not even in the days afterward.
Maybe… maybe it was for the best, then.
Maybe it was for the best, that you left the server entirely…
Despite the fact that your in-game name, Benetnasch, was the ‘last one standing’ in Capolavoro.
The only one remaining…
Maybe they were right, after all… to call you a coward for not joining them in the Noble Court.
Maybe they were right to call you a traitor for leaving them all behind, for not falling together with them.
You had your reasons, though.
100 / 600 |
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Alkaid
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Player Character
Posts: 544
Trainer Class:
Player Name: Laurence Anderson
OOC Username: Akivili
Arena Points: 10
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Post by Alkaid on Aug 17, 2024 3:50:26 GMT 9
#s://a~l3n~co/i/Sa5z5c~png The cawing sounds of a Murkrow, from somewhere far off, would reach your ears—
How long had you been lying down on… was this even ground, at this point? The corvid’s voice was strange, absolutely alien—but it was literally one screaming at you to get up, get up, get the fuck up you stupid idiot—
‘You’re fucking going to die if you don’t move!’
Those words, somehow—they reach your disconnected brain, your heavy limbs—you don’t know you manage it; you don’t know how you finally managed to pull yourself up and off the…
You tasted something in your mouth. But. But it wasn’t blood.
It wasn’t blood—
It tasted… different. Like. If you could put any kind of combination of words on how to taste a sensation that was devoid of any kind of heft, any kind of descriptive words—that’s what it was.
Little did you know that the ichor that had lashed out at you back in that accursed place was already taking over you; having taken the opportunity to spread itself as much as possible within you while you were—while you felt your existence being ripped away from your virtual representation…
Yet.
Yet why did the pain, why did all those memories feel so real?
Who knew if the ichor targeted the part of the brain that stores fear… who knew what it was fully capable of.
And to think this was just a portion of what it could really do.
‘Get moving!’ you hear the distorted voice of Muninn the Murkrow screaming at you, trying to get you to move, to get the hell out of Mistra—
To return towards safety, to run back towards the light that felt like it was an eternity away no matter how fast or how far you forced your legs to move.
It felt like you were going to explode into the void, the more you moved; but the more you stood still, the more the Murkrow would scream at you to keep the fuck moving!
50 / 600 |
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Alkaid
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Player Character
Posts: 544
Trainer Class:
Player Name: Laurence Anderson
OOC Username: Akivili
Arena Points: 10
|
Post by Alkaid on Aug 17, 2024 4:03:16 GMT 9
#s://a~l3n~co/i/Sa5oDo~png They were right.
Everyone who’d talked about how Mistra really did bring out the absolute worst in anyone who visited—
They were all fucking right!
The weight of the guilt that ate you alive; abandoning the game after the final attempt at rebellion failed—it never truly left you.
It was always there. It had always been there.
The weight of carrying this sin was too much for you; you quit playing the European version of the game after that last straw—
…but at the same time, you left them all behind.
You let them all down, Benetnasch.
You left them to the Noble Court—forever frozen where they had all fallen; and yet—and yet you had managed to escape; but was it out of necessity?
Or maybe it was all a matter of cowardice?
You’re so close—so close to what you presumed was the entrance to this accursed place, when you feel—
You feel yourself literally explode into pixels.
The sensation is familiar; having done this countless times back home, when Capolavoro was one of the heavily-requested support guilds in Italy—
Back when you felt like you were a hero who could make a change, no matter how small it was, by helping others out as much as you could manage.
You watch in quiet resignation as your hands turn to white, before fading into the void—
The void that the ichor had claimed for its own; wrapping a portion of itself around your shattered psyche; around your brain; around your entire self—
You would welcome the void for once.
But little did you know that you would actually start craving for that feeling of being wrapped in its vile embrace; the better to numb the pain; the better to forget everything and lash out; the ichor that had stained you from deep within, changing you, warping you, twisting you—
Twisting you until you ended up being a shell of your former self.
The void really liked feasting on the worst feelings—the worst experiences, memories—that it could reach.
It was a banquet, deeply gutted in your soul.
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