trans_9 | Can You Pull Down the Dawn? [Closed to Magical People]

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Can You Pull Down the Dawn? [Closed to Magical People]

The Manor of Sleep smelled of old wood and decay, snow floated down in thick clumps, swirling in sudden breezes and landing in thick drifts. Brightly candles flickered at the walkways and at the corners of random rooms, simulating warmth that had been missing from the shrine for over a century. Everywhere, she could hear the clink-clink of a mallet beating a stake into the ground, sometimes soft, sometimes loud, but always there. Miku had been doing as best as she was able, but it was appearing more and more like Reika was just playing a tricky game of Cat and Mouse with her. Miku was, after all, the last remaining Dreamer in Reika’s nightmare. Still, Miku hadn’t just been fleeing in fear mindlessly; she’d worked too.

She’d searched over and around the rooms for ages now, avoiding ghosts where she could, snatching up Purifying Lights, herbal medicines and sacred waters where she found them. There was no safe haven in the Miasma-covered rooms without one. Still, even with those items, it was becoming more and more apparent that she would be running out of film sooner than later.

There were books she’d read and read again, looking for clues, and though she knew that putting the priestess through the ritual again was the incorrect thing to do, it was beginning to look like she’d have to. Or at least purify her, somehow. Miku shifted on her feet and stood before the doors to the Chamber.

Outside, in the real world, the machine tracking Miku’s heart rate slowly began to beep more frequently. Miku turned onto her side and moaned low, heedless of how it sounded, her brow furrowed in pain. She’d been asleep for over a day and a half now, and while she’d whimpered or sighed, or even moaned a name, it’d all been very hushed. Miku held no one’s hand, or even acknowledged them.

“Please…” she said in her dream and in reality. “Please let this be… the last time.”

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((Meant for those outside working to fix Miku through other means))

Please let this be... the last time.

Nanoha sat upright in bed, the voice having echoed in her mind... but not in the familiar, warm feeling that her own telepathy had. It was cold, pained, distant - and she recognized the voice. "Miku-chan...?"

It was then that she realized that she wasn't alone in the room, and she didn't mean the form of Fate, curled up napping beside her. It was a ghastly, transparent apparition - the one she'd seen through the camera while taking a picture of Miku's tattoo - and it stared at her with empty eyes for a moment before turning to float away through the door to their room.

Something was happening with Miku. Nanoha felt a momentary pang of worry - she'd promised the girl that nothing would happen to her ... did they have less time than she thought?

She looked over at Fate, sliding out of the bed (and shaking off the wooziness she still felt). "I'm sorry," Nanoha murmured to the blonde girl, not liking having to deceive her or betray her trust - but this was something that really couldn't wait.

Pulling on her plantsuit, she left the room in pursuit of the ghost, hoping it wouldn't be too late.

And after receiving that message on the omnicoms, Roxie comes there to meet Nanoha in the medbay. Something's off about her, though. She looks... tired, much more so than usual. It looks like things caught her at a bad time.

But she's still claiming a bed next to Miku's to sit on as she starts to spread out her materials. The first thing: a black marker that she uses to start drawing glyphs on the floor connecting and surrounding the two beds.

That makes two of you, Roxie - Nanoha looks very drained herself, and very frustrated at the fact that she doesn't have any astral sensitivity at all. At the very least, she'll be able to cast a Barrier, though, meaning that anything they do won't affect the actual medbay.

"Let me know if there's something I can help with in setting it up."

"I won't need much," Roxie says, and continues drawing the lines, surrounding the two beds in expansive glyphs and markings. (Hopefully whoever does the janitorial work isn't going to mind scrubbing all this down later.) "Just make sure not to smudge these."

"I won't."

She looks around, but the ghost from earlier isn't visible. Nanoha closes her eyes, trying to feel something. "I can't feel any magic that I'm familiar with, but I heard her voice earlier, and saw the apparition I'd encountered with her beforehand."

Roxie finally finishes her pattern, and climbs up to lay on the neighboring table she's netted into it. "I'm going to try and synchronize my oneiromantic state with her. The pattern should keep the connection intact while others work on her, but please don't touch me, no matter what happens. I'll work better without the distraction."

"All right," she nods. "I'll cast Barrier, if you think it'll help - it's the spell that pushes everything half a dimension over, meaning that we won't be interrupted."

"That would be helpful, if it won't interrupt the glyphs," Roxie says, stretching out. "Is anyone else coming, though?" Finally, her eyes roll shut.

And now Nanoha is alone in her work, as Roxie falls fast asleep herself.

"Well, if it's just a half dimension over, that shouldn't interrupt me," Selene commented.

And there she was, floating on the other side of Miku, her form mostly transparent. "At least it would affect the dream dimension," she said and looked up and waved at Nanoha. "She's got something disrupting the natural flow, so I came to take a look." She added, glancing at Roxie. Looks like she was already working.

Nanoha wasn't expecting the other girl, but she quickly masks any surprise and nods. "All right. I think she'll need all the help she can get inside the dream dimension - that might be where her real battle is. I'll cast the Barrier as soon as you're ready."

"It does seem like it," Selene said and saluted. "I'll be heading in now," she said.

And vanished from sight.

Nanoha nods, shutting her eyes and quickly murmuring an incantation - and the entire room seems to take on a sickly green tone as the Barrier comes into effect, meaning that the only thing that could get in to interrupt Roxie and Selene was a powerful magic attack.

((Meant for the dream walking kind of people))

For Roxie and any other dream walkers, the dream opens as it has for Miku many times now. At first, there is nothing but blackness and the ting-ting of metal being struck upon, over and over. Then, comes the snow, soft and white, falling in clumps. Everything is in monochrome, however, and the scream of static in the air is unnatural and cutting, bringing with it half-flashes of memories and words that sound garbled and cut up.

There is a bright, soft light, and then they too, stand before the manor. (http://www.cameraslens.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10001/200511163933462.jpg)

And there Dream Weaver appeared, down the walk in front of the Manor. She looked around, her attire already morphing to match with the dreams setting. For something strange, it was better to blend in until she could discover everything going on. "Roxie?" She called out softly, trying to spot the girl.

"I'm here," Roxie says from just behind Selene in what might be a 'gah!' moment. She really loves doing the creepy thing, apparently. She's wrapped in that red cloak again, though this time it covered in spirals of elegant embroideries and patterns. "Are you ready?"

Dream Weaver jumped. "Gah!" She yelped in surprise, whirling around to face Roxie. "Jeeze, you don't have to sneak up on people," she said. She wasn't really creeped out as much as surprised.

She wasn't creeped out easily, anyway.

"Yeah," she said, nodding her head. "Let's go," she said, heading for the Manor.

The wooden doors open with an arthritic creak, as if they haven't been moved in a very long time. The noise echoes into the dark hallway beyond, barely lit by candles. The monochrome nature of the dream, and the thick, heavy atmosphere make it hard to breathe for most.

Not only that, as if to make the feeling of uneasy grow in an already uneasy dream, it feels as if there is someone watching from the shadows. The metallic sound in the distance continues, ting-ting-ting-ting.

"Are you the new priestess?" a little girl's voice asks from the dark. "Will you stay here? Forever?"

"I am a priestess," Roxie says, stepping forward unafraid, "but I am only visiting. I am here to pay my respects to the inhabitants of this place." It's a bald-faced lie, but the right words can make quite a difference when dealing with some types of supernatural beings.

"I am not a priestess, merely a visitor," Dream Weaver said, looking towards the darkness, trying to determine if the unnatural feeling was coming from there.

There wasn't an answer (the dead were rarely in the habit of doing much more than repeating themselves), but the atmosphere, so heavy and oppressive, lightened somewhat.

A small girl, no more than eight years old with her hair in short braids, (http://cameraslens.com/fatalframewiki/images/8/8a/Amanekuzebio.jpg) appeared before them and silently lifted her arm and pointed at the right-branching corridor. It wouldn't be so disturbing, probably, if she were more solid. Unfortunately, the pitted, dirty plaster wall behind her is quite visible.

She vanishes, her soft voice urging, "Hurry."

Roxie pauses a moment. Hmm. And then she moves forward down the pointed-out path. It's as good as anything else, and nothing here seems coordinated enough to force some kind of actual ambush... not that she wouldn't be able to handle that if it happened, anyway.

On her face is something almost approximating a smile.

Dream Weaver hesitated a moment before heading down the path as well. She was still looking around, trying to see if she could determine where the source of 'different' was coming from.

She wasn't very good at it. Everything felt off unless she had something she could focus on solely. She'd have to see about refining that sense somehow.

"Do you think there's more than one being that's causing this dream?" She asked. After all, if the ghost was in control, that little girl might be more of a danger than she appeared. And it was always hard to determine how strong the actual dreamer was in a controlled dream.

"It seems too complex to be the result of a single being." Roxie reaches out and brushes a hand against one of the walls. "It might be some kind of gestalt. With those who have died to the curse, I would not be surprised if their spirits were somehow incorporated into the place."

The corridor is L-shaped, but the house doesn't change; not the heaviness in the atmosphere, the monochrome coloring, or the sensation of still being watched. There's a small place where it leads off, and ahead of them, the little girl walks through the door into the foyer.

It would appear you have an ally.

At least for now.

"Well, I didn't mean necessarily for the surroundings. I've found one alteration will remain constant more often than not because the dreamer maintains it unless something happens to make them change it," Dream Weaver said.

"It's the characters that it's harder to tell with," she added, gesturing to the little girl. "Those usually need a puppeteer. Especially when it's that direct." She stopped at the door, looking into the foyer.

"The question is, is it our target, the dreamer, or the third party?"

"Not just a character," Roxie murmurs, and her eyes open a little wider, glazing over with silver patterns. Her face twitches. "N-n-not—hgchk." She swallows down a cough and blinks sharply, eyes tearing up. "Not a character. There's more than that at play here." She looks over at Selene, pauses a moment, and then steps forward unafraid into the foyer.

Through a squat, square door that required nearly being on one's knees, through a maze like corridor that just feels as though, there is something wrong and unnatural in the very walls, past a huge pile of gravestones and paper dolls, swaying in the breeze, and finally, into a four-way courtyard, Amane leads them dutifully. The doorways are hung with sacred ropes, the white, braided paper waving slightly in the cold, wintry breeze. Snow falls bare upon

And dutifully, as Miku - ahead of them in the north corridor - pushes open the heavy wood doors, a candle burning with a soft, blue flame in one hand, begins her decent to the chamber of thorns, Amane vanishes. The heavy, hard-to-breathe atmosphere lifts. Color returns to the dream.

Unlike Selene and Roxie, who tried to fit into the theme of the dream, Miku does not. (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v212/Sentralia/Miku%20Icons/zero3miku.jpg) She huffs a little as she pushes the stubborn door, but eventually, it opens for her.

In fact, it doesn't even seem like she notices Roxie and Selene.

Dream Weaver looked at her worriedly at that. "Are you okay?" She asked, putting a hand on her shoulder to make sure she didn't fall over.

More? She glanced at the girl. The girl was more than just a part of the dream being manipulated?

When Roxie takes a step forward, she moves her hand off her shoulder. She had to duck down low to get through the door, looking around. Well, it was certainly a creepy setting. "What exactly...is in here?" She muttered.

Most of the dreams she's been in that were altered were always done because of affects of science. Even the Nightmare Beasts had only been drawn because of those actions and not something she dealt with for long directly.

So she was still trying to figure out exactly how to find this spirit.

But then there was Miku. "Think we should approach her?" She asked in a low voice to Roxie. Roxie did know the mystical side to this sort of thing.

"Our purpose here is to protect her," Roxie says, stepping forward. "We can't do that if we don't stay near her. Miku!" she calls sharply, the rest of her almost silent as her shoes whisper across the floor. "This is like a world in and of itself. This realm has been reinforced from the inside-out." She glances over at Selene. "I doubt any of the people who have died to this curse have simply gone away."

Miku stops and waves her flashlight through the gloom, tracking the sound of her name. So, her confusion is all that more apparent when she notices the filament on her camera doesn't light as Roxie advances.

She stands between the the door and holds her camera to her chest with one hand. "...I'm sorry, did I dream about you?"

Protecting by staying close?

Well, that certainly unnerved Dream Weaver. Usually to protect the dreamer, it didn't require to physically be near them. And then the curse...

So that meant the curse was on Miku and she brought everything with her?

She walked along side Roxie, raising an eyebrow at Miku's comment. "You know you're dreaming?"

Miku looked down at the cracked, old wood of the floor beneath her where it gave way to cracked, old stone. "Of course I do." She pointed back to the darkness behind her. "And I'm going to make myself wake up, even if it kills me."

And considering she was always a finger's breadth from dying anyway, they were better odds than she usually would've given herself. "If I dreamt about you, I apologize... I don't even think we've met before..." Miku bowed politely.

"I am Roxana, the Red Evening Before Gentle Dawn." Roxie glances over at Selene but doesn't say anything. She'll have to provide her own introduction, apparently. (An overly fancy title is likely only an optional element.) "We have come here to protect you at the behest of those who care for you in the waking world." She returns the bow. (Oh, if only any of Roxie's friends were here to observe her polite-for-once manner...)

A lucid dreamer who apparently isn't in control? Another worrying sign indeed.

"I am Dream Weaver of Apex City," Dream Weaver said. It wasn't in her habits to use her real name in the dream plane. "Here to help with any and all dream problems."

Even if she didn't know how to deal with the magical kind, but hey, experience is how one learns.

Miku straightened, and smiled at them, though it seemed to hurt her. "It's very nice to meet you, I look forward to working together." She didn't want a protection that would certainly end up hurting them. The blue flame on her candle flickered slightly. "But we should hurry; I don't know how much longer this candle will burn... and time is so funny here."

She pushed the door the rest of the way open and beckoned them to follow her. "I was going to... go down to the Abyss, to the Chamber of Thorns. I'm going to stop her." Miku explained quietly and shone her light over the temple complex behind the door. A large, torii gate dominated the temple grounds. To the right, Miku's light caught a collection of grave stones. before them, just ahead, two large, wood-and-plaster buildings.

As the last person of their party stepped through, the door closed with a click of finality. By itself.

"'Her'?" Roxie asks, glancing back at the door. Spooky, but it doesn't bother her much. "What is the Chamber of Thorns?" Her cloak ripples around her in the throes of a wind that isn't there at all.

Selene followed along, focusing on the candle, testing her own abilities as she focused to not let the candle burn out. An illusion to keep the wick from becoming too burnt that it'd go out and to keep the candle from melting too low.

"Have you stopped her before, in your dreams?" Selene asked. First off, to see if she could remember her other dreams. Second, to see if it might actually be worthwhile to go through the story or not, that there was a point in stopping 'her' specifically.

"Reika," Miku answered absently, walking off the path to pick something up by the gravestones. More film. Good, she'd need that. It was stowed away in a pocket on her skirt, and she turned to look at the other two.

"It's the place they impale the priestesses of this temple. You know..." Miku sighed and looked off towards the torii gate and the buildings in the distance, "It would have been so much better if the folk beliefs didn't say that a person needed to sacrificed for everything." There was a sad twinge in her voice, that she shook off. "I haven't beaten her before, no. If I had, we wouldn't be here."

She started walking again, briskly. There wasn't much time, was there? Miku passed the gate and paused before the big doors of the building. Mafuyu beckoned to her from beyond the door, she could feel his spirit - warm and gentle - waiting for her to see him. "We'll have to be very quick through the temple, and then down into the chamber."

"Sacrifice holds power, but there are generally usable alternatives," Roxie says. Film? She wonders why such a thing would be scattered like that. Perhaps put there by that little ghost that seemed to want to help. It still seems strange, inconsistent with the pseudoreality warped in on itself. Could it have been an aspect pulled in with Miku?

"Everytime I hear about sacrifices, it usually results in evil spirits. Or pissed off relatives," Dream Weaver commented thoughtfully.

"But I hardly think a sacrifice can be allowed in this sort of situation," she said, putting a hand on Miku's shoulder. "We'll help you win."

Miku nodded. "Come on; it's this way." And into the temple they went. There was still an odd thickness to the air here, something the candle Miku carried couldn't totally push away.

There were voices, soft ones, pleading or cursing them as they passed the ruined walls, and rotten wood, avoiding holes in the flooring. Occasionally, Miku would stop and watch something go past, then lift her camera to take a photo of it. Bright blue orbs came shooting back at her, entering the camera's lens. She pushed open another set of doors, where a cage hung just beyond a platform.

A young woman inside looked up. Her skin was pale and translucent where there weren't indigo tattoos covering it. She looked tired and in pain, just as Miku often did in the waking world. She looked at once hopeful for them and pleadingly reached a hand out for them.

Miku lifted her camera out of instinct and took a shot. The girl vanished, and the cage dropped into the darkness below.

"Down, I guess." Miku murmured.

"Down," Roxie repeats, and moves forward to look down into the darkness, her knife at the ready.

Dream Weaver moved to the edge to look down the hole the cage had dropped. "Down it is," she said, looking all around. She didn't want to be caught off guard.

It was a two way street. She was stronger in dreams, but she was also more vulnerable.

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Can You Pull Down the Dawn? [Closed to Magical People]

Reality

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In the Dream

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