ORIGIN - oddity.

- The first part of this thread happens in the tunnel near the entrance to the Carnival, but not yet in the Carnival. -

Audland had been chilling in Ursa, as was the intended purpose of this body, up until the point in which his body had given him a different natural signal. No, it wasn't the need to pee. You could do that in the snow, although if you cared at all about covering your tracks, you probably shouldn't. But I digress. Audland was hungry.

Eating in Ursa was a complicated matter. Fortunately, Audland had every resource to kill and corrupt any potentially-infected Lesser before shoving it in his mouth. Unfortunately, all his resources made the food suck bad. Like, really bad. His taste buds felt cursed, or rather, like a curse. Oil does not taste good, not even necessarily to a valkhouond.

Ever since gorging with Plover, Audland had been chasing that high. A dog that is hot was packed with so much more umami than the literal ash Audland sometimes had to scoop into his mouth due to his magic going awry. Which it often did. He'd been wondering, quite literally, about how the sausage was made. How to make things cooked, and warm, and not disgusting to eat. His chaotic fire was clearly not the solution.

Pegasus was not necessarily a bigger room than Ursa, but it had larger food that was easier to find. If Audland could kill something there, even if it was with his corrupted magic, there would likely still be enough untouched meat left to work with. Did Audland know any of this? No. He'd never been to Pegasus. Didn't even know what a Pegasus was. But he'll find out, if he can get there.

If. For now, he has to deal with the trickstery lights illuminating this otherwise wonderfully dark tunnel. The trees curving overhead are very polite, lifting away somewhat to allow just enough space for Audland to squeeze in unimpeded. The lights, too, are likely intended to be polite for everyone else. But not for Audland. For Audland, they were just upsetting, nagging irritants, like flies or gnats. Random dark blots in his vision. Reminders of something he didn't like, though he wouldn't admit it straight out.

His magic would stir, attempting to reach out in the only helpful way it ever had. Something to darken the terrain as Audland went. Slowly but surely, a blackness ruminated out from his form and enveloped the space around and in front of Audland, covering the lights to give him a clear path through. Though to an outsider it likely looked as though an ominous wall of unnaturally dark, oozy smoke was just... steadily drifting toward them.

@V-Chaos-Eleven

The Olympics had left Eleven with a lot to chew on. Stewing in their brain was the embarrassment of failure, the strange wisdom the mushroom-deer had dispersed, that stupid big blue valkhound-

And a moderate amount of concern for their sibling after they'd acted out on the arena. Fights with Agate weren't like that, usually. Or maybe they were both more careful, considering the rules... Eleven liked to think that it was because they cared about each other, but often they struggled to believe that was the case.

Further back in their mind was Gravedigger, and the due date ticking ever downwards. What would happen? Would they be there to see him go? Or would he just... Disappear, without a trace? With only a handful of people to remember h-

What the fuck is that.

Eleven halted their languid walk down the tunnel upon spotting the wall of shadow slowly traveling down its length, and TOWARDS them. They bristled, hackles raised and quills at the ready as they stared down this sudden, living abyss.

"HEY." They barked, unsure if they'd get an answer.

@Audland

The steadily darkening lights approaching Eleven would likely stir them from their thoughts. Not that the one behind it would realize. Not until Eleven spoke.

But in the moment just before: the darkness would grow like thickening smoke with no source, darkness wafting from an unknowable point somewhere down the tunnel. The trees would bend away, clearing a path for this encompassing darkness as it steadily encroached. Not a face to be found in the lightless fog. It might have looked haunting, or foreboding. Threatening, even though it moved with a cloudlike pace. Subtle. Blink and you'll miss it, the next light it claims.

Eleven at this point might feel like a blocky protagonist in the popular Roblox game "DOORS" l'mao.

Upon speaking, they might feel a sudden chill run through them. Was it cold, or was it simply absence? As the tendrils of the fanning darkness began to lick ever so gently at the tips of their fur.

Audland, upon realizing someone is somewhere in front of him, tries initially to reach out for that blasted, useless magic of his. To understand without seeing, to speak without speaking. To reach in and tell the poor creature to come face their fear, so he can get a better look at them.

And something does enter. A pain begins to spring from somewhere in his mind, breaking his concentration. His darkness dissipates from around him. But Audland does not realize this. To him, the darkness remains, and also doesn't. The light and dark somehow coincide, take up the same space. And someone has entered his bubble. Some...thing. It doesn't make sense. It's purple, it's large, its face is... not a face. Disproportionate, blurred. He can't seem to look at it long enough to tell what it is, no matter how long he looks for. Squinting, Audland looks upward towards the purple figure. "Hello? Wh... What are you?"

It doesn't move. It doesn't even seem to twitch, or breathe, Audland notices. And now, the horror has flipped.

@V-Chaos-Eleven (a failure on Forsaken Mind has caused Audland to hallucinate and drop his Encompassing Darkness)

There was a long, painful stretch of time before anything changed, where Eleven's mind and body was at a knife's edge. The cloud crept lazily onward, darkness encroaching...

Only for it to dissipate with zero warning, no catharsis. No jumpscare (unless you find big blue anthro dragons threatening). Just a sudden dismissal of all the tension it'd built.

"Oh. It's you."

But the clarity was not shared. Audland was looking somewhere else, bright eyes fixed at a point well above Eleven's head. He spoke to this invisible thing, and they swore they heard fear in his tone.

"Uhh."

They weren't sure what he was seeing, or if they should address it at all. They preferred the living shadow to this, actually. This was awkward AND creepy.

"Helloooo? Can you hear me?"

@Audland

Eleven's disdain initially fell on deaf ears, as Audland couldn't seem to pry his eyes away from the grotesque thing he was experiencing in that moment. But, upon their second attempt at interaction, something seemed to jumpstart deep in Audland's brain somewhere, and he responded as though he'd just been startled awake. "Wh-huh!?" He blinks, and seizes up in a cartoonish pose, his little yellow dots zipping straight to Eleven's figure.

The darkness resolved, the unknowable creature dissipating with it, and all that was left was a familiar shape and a familiar voice in what registered to Audland as an annoyingly blotchy-dim light. "Yyyyyy—you?! Is that you?" For a flickering moment, the purple-red being's image overlapped with Eleven's, as though it were guarding them, or overlayed on top of them, or... it just didn't make sense. Audland's eyes flickered to the left and right, as though he were trying to catch a glimpse of where that thing had wandered off to. But he couldn't find it. It was just gone.

Terrifying as that was, Audland's compulsion to get his act together right spankin' now had a much tighter hold on his brain stem. He had to get a sense of his surroundings immediately, or else this was going to look really really pathetic and there'd be no saving it.

Like a slowly boiling pot of water, his chaotic darkness slithered out from his skin in wafting tendrils. It was going painfully slow, as though it was teasing his blue loser behind, but Audland wasn't going to take that bait. He rushes Eleven now, two hands attempting to clasp around their face, or at least get near enough to it that the darkness would surround them both and he could finally see all the details.

"What are you doin' here?" His voice would lose all hint of fear whether he reached them or not. In their cramped space, there wouldn't be many places to go to escape the inky black tendrils of Audland's magic. Perhaps that was a comforting factoid to know—or, given the very real-feeling blob headed giraffe thing that was now out there somewhere, perhaps it was not.

@V-Chaos-Eleven

The switch-up in Audland's demeanor almost made Eleven jump, another wave of shock sent shooting down the fur along their spine. They stood up straight now, flattening their pelt with a frustrated huff.

But he didn't seem like he fully present, not yet. It was a step in the direction they preferred, at least. "The guy from the wrestling match. I bit you, remember?"

And if memory served them right too, he'd had it coming.

The finger on the monkey's paw had curled while Eleven hadn't been paying attention. The darkness came back, and they felt a new flush of fear when they recognised it now. The spell had stricken them with nightmares for days afterward - dark, inky, full of invisible and skittering creatures all covered in slime.

They could feel the tendrils now, creeping somewhere inside them - somewhere just as dark as those awful, awful dreams. MOTHERFUCKER.

"I LIVE here. What are you doing here?" Eleven sniffed in distaste. "You're not even Forge." A stray dog to their pedigree breeding. (Yeah, let's pretend that's true.)

@Audland