now let's skip the tears and start on the whole-

[stagemanagers]

[You remember dying. Maybe the memory is clear and bright and your body still aches from the cause. Maybe it was fast enough that you didn't feel it and don't remember what you went through. But no matter how you went out you're still trapped here.

When you open your eyes it might take you a minute to recognize your surroundings. For the executed, it's your dressing room. For the victims, you startle awake in the place your body was discovered. But no matter where you are nothing is where you remember it. It's like everything has been picked up and moved to the other side of the room. The entire room has been perfectly mirrored from what it used to be and, upon leaving, it seems the rest of the opera house is just the same. If you remember one room being in the east wing, it's now in the west. If it was in the west, it's now in the east.


Welcome back to the Opera House, friends. Even in death you're still in the woods.]


WEEK 1 | WEEK 2 | WEEK 3 | WEEK 4 | WEEK 5


[ooc: Welcome to deadland, darlings! It's a perfectly mirrored version of the Opera House and each week, as new people die after new floors have been revealed, the stairwell doors will unlock and allow you to reach them. For example, week 3 victims will unlock floor 2 and so on and so forth. Also, all dead characters will wake up at their actual canon point.

Have fun because we have some fun things planned for you.]

Comments

[reassuranceandrevolution]

Oh? So you're one of us lowly peasants now?

[mcfife]

I am no peasant! [He swishes his cape around dramatically.] I am a prince, one that refuses to die without a legacy, like a start so small it only becomes gaseous dust!

...And it was a metaphor. What do peasants mean to an evil ruler?

[reassuranceandrevolution]

[SSigyn raises an eyebrow. The display was surly meant to be intimidating, and perhaps to others it would have been. Right now it just makes her sad]

Legacy. What is a legacy?
It's planting seeds in a garden you never get to see.

[mcfife]

[Being remembered. That's what it is.]

To become a new star, a black hole, a constant fixture in the sky when your life is over. That was my destiny from birth

I wrote some notes at the beginning of a song someone will sing for me
Dundee, you great unfinished symphony, you sent for me

[reassuranceandrevolution]

Being remembered means nothing if you did nothing useful.

I believed I could make a difference
Make Midgard a place where orphans and immigrants
Could leave their fingerprints and rise up

[mcfife]

I could have done something more than defeat a wizard a disappear if I returned home!

I'm running out of time, I'm running, and my time's up
Wise up, eyes up
I catch a glimpse of the other side
Proletius leads a knights' chorus on the other side
My dad is on the other side
He's with my mother on the other side

[reassuranceandrevolution]

Well at lease your villain is dead!

[If she couldn't save Midgard, she'll risk her eternity to help her friends]

We are watching them from the other side

We'll teach them how to say goodbye and

Rise up, rise up, rise up

[mcfife]

Arise...-

[Angus catches himself and locks his throat from singing anymore of the anthem that lead a resistance army what seems to be years ago. His hand jerks away from Sigyn, behind his back, and he takes a step away from her without breaking eye contact.]

What are you doing?

[reassuranceandrevolution]

Right now? Cutting out a pocket and having a nice discussion about legacies.

[She stares right back.]

[mcfife]

No, this- [He gestures at the dead mannequin on the floor.] You're trying to do something to me.

[reassuranceandrevolution]

Honestly, Angus, I have no idea what I'm doing. But if it's starting to make you feel like your old self, I'll take it.

[mcfife]

[He doesn't trust like that. Sigyn must be plotting something. That's what they all do. They're constantly trying to take him down, trying to have him struck down. Scheming together.

His level of trust shows up in his eyes.]

I know you despise me. This isn't accidental.

[reassuranceandrevolution]

I don't despise you, Angus! I don't even hate you. You-you-

[She throws the scissors down in frustration]

You just make me sad! I want to talk to you and not be constantly reminded that you're just like the people we swore we'd fight against. Out of everyone here, you're the only other one who might even come close to understanding all the shit I remembered after I died.

[More than usual, Sigyn looks incredibly tired.]

I just want my friend back.

[mcfife]

[She had a point, long ago. Together they planned to fight the rulers of their universes. Together, they trained on the side of the Good. They both once saw a dystopia that deserved to be destroyed and rebuilt.]

I- That can't happen anymore. This is not what the Anti-Telharsic power now part of my body wants me to do. We cannot be friends. [He says to remind himself as well.] That's not how Evil works.

...Though I am still sure nothing can phase me anymore from your universe. Would anyone else here call me anything other than a liar if I told them the resistance army uses a flying submarine? No, I am just a crazy man who believes he is a prince, nothing more. [Bitter, maybe?]

I'm so sorry

[reassuranceandrevolution]

Fine.

[Norns, she's been waiting to get this off of her chest for weeks, it just sort of spills out]

The Ratatosk Express was never meant to transport people, it was meant to bring elder gods into our reality so they could destroy all of Yggdrasil. Odin had gone mad listening to their whispers. On the train I found my wife, who I thought was dead for 5 years after a very brutal public execution. Apparently Odin didn't kill her, but instead broke her mind so she could continue working on that abomination of a train. After destroying the human-powered engine the terrors started invading the train. Loki came to me and we hooked her up to the engine to power it for as long as possible, because as soon at that engine arrived in Midgard, destruction would follow. So I got to watch her die. Again.

[She's...she's breathing a little heavy after that]

So a flying submarine doesn't sound too out of the ordinary for me.

[mcfife]

[That is...intense.] Sometimes one dies to stop an elder god from being summoned.

[He states this as a fact. That...happens. He's not sad about the Hootsman. He shouldn't be sad.

You shouldn't even feel anything about it.]

But then that friend may come back as a demigod. Or as a legend. Midgard is safe because of you and of her.

[reassuranceandrevolution]

[She lets out a hollow laugh]

Oh, no. As soon as Loki's blood ran dry the train exited the wormhole, with all the terrors and elder gods right behind us. We didn't save anyone, just bought some time.

Like I said: at least you saved your world.

[mcfife]

I didn't. Not my home. That blew up in our efforts to stop Kor-Villiath's summoning.

The other world, where I was impaled, is hopefully safe. I do not know what the future holds for it.

[reassuranceandrevolution]

Well, I guess we have that in common too. I have no idea if what we did mattered. Time there was weird. We could have bought them minutes or years, we'll never know.

[Another chuckle]

I guess that's my legacy.

[mcfife]

And now we stay here for eternity, taunting us with the idea of existence. It makes my blood boil.

[reassuranceandrevolution]

We can only hope that if the living are released we will be too.

[She picks up the scissors again, cutting out the rest of the fabric in a few rough cuts]

I just want to see her again. That's all I need.

[mcfife]

Oh? And you'll let me be free after everything? Will you and the doctor and Mesphisto want me to come back to life like nothing had happened?

[Angus's posture straightens as if he has suddenly remembered something important.]

[reassuranceandrevolution]

Honestly, I just expect we'll stay dead and get to move on to Valhalla. Pretty sure none of our friends can raise the dead.

[mcfife]

[???]

Is that what you call the afterlife in your world?

[reassuranceandrevolution]

One of them, yeah. I think dying in a firey train crash trying to hold off elder gods qualifies us well enough.