A dance interrupted.

An otherworldly mist devours their surroundings after meteors 'fell' from the sky. It's quite amazing, really. Anything impactful enough to tear illeana reyes and Remiel Calcifet away from their dance has to be.

What follows after their once entwined fingers separate, however, is magical in only one sense of the word. Remiel is briefly distracted by the vague shape of a human form in the mist afar. But, when he hears Illeana like an echo, he turns to face her... and finds that she is suddenly nowhere to be found.

He hears bits and pieces of her speech from seemingly all around. But, quite frankly, the sound of her choked sobs tells him more than those echoed whispers can ever hope to do. Illeana?! He shouts. Or wait... did he think it? Which came first? Or, perhaps, none at all?

Stepping towards one of the aisles in the hedge maze, the royal is determined to find her again anyway. Though he freezes in his tracks when he begins to hear a hauntingly familiar melody being hummed behind him.

Wide-eyed and fearful of hope, Remiel struggles to turn around. His mouth only manages to utter a single word:

"... I-Isra?"

---

💠 continued from star soiree...

SPOILER: Click to show

AS DESIRES MANIFEST IN THIS PHANTASMAGORICAL REALM, the mist thickens. Those who indulge in their wishes may not realize the degree of separation between the previous dimension and the one they previously resided in. The further those venture into the mist, the more lost they become. Spatiality works differently. With one step into the mist, one can not simply take one step back to leave it. Traversal is different here— and whether it is due to the latent properties of the Interdream Zone or the dimensional dilapidation is unclear....

Unbeknownst to everyone, there has been another dimensional break. Though, such an occurrence may come as no surprise to those who have witnessed the instability of ultra wormholes, temporal and spatial errors, and lost Unown.

The dream mist that some of you wade in begins to darken in the liminal spaces between it and another energy. Some of you see eyes blinking back at you from the mist before disappearing into purple clouds that stain the pink quilt of this place. Suddenly, your characters' wishes begin to twist. Corrupt. Physical manifestations of lost loved ones become dreadful beings. Utopian scenes become worst case scenarios.

Screams can be heard as the manifested desires begin to turn into nightmarish ones.

SOIREE + illeana reyes

☉

[attr="class","illie"]

[attr="class","illie b"]

[attr="class","illie i"]the name echoes here, there, everywhere.

it's familiar, this name lost to time. and yet, it doesn't take any hold of her. no... she has her own ghosts to be haunted by.

they follow without hesitation. one of green and one of pink, always just out of reach.

and she moves for what feels like hours ticking into nothing...

all roads lead to hell, illeana reyes.
you should have learned this by now.

when will you just fucking learn?

familiar scales flutter, settle, and stir. the ghost of a lost lover takes the backseat to that of a former god. and when the pearly pink scales begin to pick up with sinister life, her head turns at the sensation. it's too nostalgic, too painful of a thing to just ignore.

faintly, she wonders of remiel for a fleeting moment. and briefly, illeana hopes he's faring better than she...

"why," she tries but it comes out strangled, choked, weak. she swallows and tries again anyway. "why are you doing this?"

the telepathic link between them ignites with a vengeance here and now. tapu lele's snickers echo into the deep recesses of her mind. and there's no corner the deity doesn't touch. cherished memories, repressed trauma... it's all torn open for a purpose. they flash in a sequence like a movie's trailer leading up to here.

each mistake, each wrong move leads to this.

when will you learn.
weak weak weak weak WEAK.

she chokes back another sob, blindly searching through purple fog.

save me save me save me
god, please save me...

tapu lele dissolves into cackles as she moves, as she pleads and begs and grovels for salvation that never comes. and when alexander's hand clamps down on her trembling shoulder, she wails.

"come now, love... there's no use. there's no savior for you here."

Remiel Calcifet

The veil between reality and daydream (... nightmare?) grows ever thinner. There, at the end of the blurring hedge maze path, stands the woman of his seemingly undying obsession. For her presence had been as profound as his sudden loss of it, and her absent love left the gaping hole within his heart even wider to be filled.

He'd experienced a version of this before, of course: in his dreams, in his nightmares. Or, at the very least, Remiel thinks he has. Despite that, the perceived mirage is no less impactful. And when she speaks, with such clarity and familiarity that he thought he'd lost to memory, the royal is shaken to his core and stunned into stillness. Cobalt hues widen, but his vision narrows.

"Is there something I should be saying right now?" A slip of a smile, as mysterious and woefully charming as the day he'd met her in that moonlit street in Lilycove. "Or is there something... you'd like to admit, mon cher?"

GUILT GUILT GUILT

... DAMNATION.

---

💠 continued from star soiree...

SPOILER: Click to show

AS DESIRES MANIFEST IN THIS PHANTASMAGORICAL REALM, the mist thickens. Those who indulge in their wishes may not realize the degree of separation between the previous dimension and the one they previously resided in. The further those venture into the mist, the more lost they become. Spatiality works differently. With one step into the mist, one can not simply take one step back to leave it. Traversal is different here— and whether it is due to the latent properties of the Interdream Zone or the dimensional dilapidation is unclear....

Unbeknownst to everyone, there has been another dimensional break. Though, such an occurrence may come as no surprise to those who have witnessed the instability of ultra wormholes, temporal and spatial errors, and lost Unown.

The dream mist that some of you wade in begins to darken in the liminal spaces between it and another energy. Some of you see eyes blinking back at you from the mist before disappearing into purple clouds that stain the pink quilt of this place. Suddenly, your characters' wishes begin to twist. Corrupt. Physical manifestations of lost loved ones become dreadful beings. Utopian scenes become worst case scenarios.

Screams can be heard as the manifested desires begin to turn into nightmarish ones.

SOIREE + illeana reyes

☉

[attr="class","illie"]

[attr="class","illie b"]

[attr="class","illie i"]it's like trying to scream but nothing coming out. helpless. a lamb left for slaughter.

pink, green. scales, mist. a silhouette of a gallade.

she counts them. over and over and over. somewhere along the way, her eyes get lost. and she must start over... for the agony is not done.

where Remiel Calcifet faces his past love, illeana does no such thing.

she meets her mistakes. faults, losses, destiny.

it is not by coincidence these souls haunt her. it is by design, fated and tethered to each part of her body by red string.

and while it looks flimsy, she couldn't possibly cut it away if she tried.

"why can't you leave?"

her voice is small. insignificant. she despises it.

"you know why."

deep down, she does. selfishness manifests in many shapes and forms. hers is in a pattern of destructive behavior designed for delusional success. it comes with sacrifice, self-destruction, pain. and yet, she can't stop herself from diving as deep as she can into it all.

littleroot. ultra beast war. field of flowers.

they all share one glaring similarity: ignoring consequences in favor of martyrdom.

when the pink scales settle onto her skin, they feel real. tangible. they burn worse than she remembers. a scream erupts and she's defiant even now as more scales settle onto the body. they leave splotches of peeling skin, bubbling up and trying to rip off bone.

"why can't you just leave me alone?"

Remiel Calcifet

[attr="class","illie"]

[attr="class","illie b"]

[attr="class","illie i"]a horrified scream echoes.

it bounces off walls, mist, nothingness. as it vibrates in her bones, she wonders if it was birthed out of Remiel Calcifet's lungs. if not him then who?

her throat is not yet raw and bloody from screams. soon, perhaps...

and it has never dawned on her how many things she feared until now.

each thing seems so small yet larger than life all at once. a dizzying sort of sensation, that realization.

she shrinks into herself the way she had when she was a child. cowering in a corner, praying and sobbing for the worst to be over. it never is. somehow, it always seems to grow and grow until she's certain it'll kill her.

"now why are you doing that?"

her face twists, contorts. it doesn't feel like her own anymore.

"what?"

snickers echo. they're familiar, floral scented and tinged pink.

"crying, folding in on yourself like being small and insignificant will save you."

she wants to scream how it worked before, how she felt reprieve after so many blows.

it's the mind tricking her, really. pressing herself into the smallest possible corner of her childhood home only angered her father further.

and while angry gods are a terrifying sort of divine intervention, they cannot hold a candle to the man that raised her.

she expects his face to rise next but he's still haunting her in the daylight, outside of this mist's reach. he still breathes while alexander stone rots and decays into a maggot filled husk beneath dirt. fate is cruel, she muses. cruel and unfair and atrocious.

"leave me alone."

green hair overtakes the vision as a barely there -- or is that her imagination, that phantom sensation? -- hand grabs her chin with a grip ready to bruise. there, he holds her still. purple tinged green devouring red.

"you don't want that."

she squirms. his grip on her chin tightens.

"you're terrified of being alone, illeana. why else would you fuck any guy that gives you a scrap of attention?"

a whimper follows.

and it takes everything in her to break away, to shove the phantom body out of the way and scramble across the floor. a feeble attempt for finding an exit but it will have to do. it must.

Remiel Calcifet