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

[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.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

[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.

[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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.]

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.

[???]

Is that what you call the afterlife in your world?

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

Well, I'll be a Hootsman and ask where do other people go when they die if not a general otherworld.

The Realm of Ran for those who are lost at sea or space, Hel for those who caused meaningless suffering, or the fields of Folkvangr for everyone else.

...

"Hell" I understand. [Otherwise how can he sing about terrible weapons of war or of volcanic graves?] But that sounds better than whatever this is.

[Something about how he says "Hel" doesn't sound right. Like an extra letter? Whatever, probably nothing.]

Loads better.

We might as well ask to have the Phantom take us there if he wants us to suffer so much. There is little left we can do here.

I don't know if he wants the dead to suffer. Seems like he doesn't quite know what to do with us.

He executed us while taunting us. That is an intent to cause us to suffer.

...You have a point.

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

I'm so sorry

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