[RP] Dragonsummer Chronicles [No spaces left][Begin!]

[Kerrigan_dragon]

((Summary: More interactions with Daniel and Jocelyn, a flashback to Jocelyn's childhood, and Jocelyn insisting that she take care of Daniel whether he likes it or not.))

"Your name is Daniel," Jocelyn replied to the man simply as she steadied him. "Your drugs are gone. None of us have them. You enjoy music, and wish to not be judged by others. I'd say that from your introduction, however brief, that I know at least a little bit about you. Regardless of your wishes, by our very human nature, each person in this room has judged you, as you have judged them. We have all likely made assumptions about each other at this point that may or may not be true. I feel I should care for you because you are a person with thoughts, feelings and emotions, and I believe you have the right to good health."

Still keeping Daniel steady, Jocelyn reached into her pocket and pulled out a stick of gum, popping it into her mouth. Her lips curled very slightly into a smile at the taste of spearmint: it always reminded her of her parents, of home, of family, and that sense that everything is right with the world. It made her think of evenings long past spent sitting in front of the couch by the fire, her father trying - and failing - to braid her hair in her mother's stead, with steaming cups of tea beside them as her mother cooked dinner, whistling and humming and always busy, even in stillness. Her smile faded a bit as she realized that this might be her last pack of gum forever. Joeclyn made a note to save it as long as she could, before turning her attention back to Daniel.

"So like it or not, you're my patient now. It doesn't appear as though you can take care of yourself very well at this point. Besides, it'll give me something to do to distract myself from the plaguing cold."  

[DaisukeOrDark]

Bryce mumbled in his sleep. He opened his eyes to the small dark space he was in. He was by a small fire on an odd bed. His heart pumped. "Where am I..." he whispered to himself silently. The last he remembered there was that weird darkness... then the snow... and then darkness again. His toes were cold. The small fire had barley been enough to keep him from freezing even more. The moved and his blanket fell. He gasped as the cold hit his back.
He stood up on weak legs and fell back onto the bed. he struggled to get back up. He wrapped the blanket around his torso. Talking from the outside of the room filled his ears. He moved to the door and cracked it open. The room was filled with people. He moved out. Blanket draping as much as it could.
"H-hello?"  

[Roland Karloseth]

Jacob watched the druggie who introduced himself as Daniel (Never "Danny", he would have to remember that and use it if he saw an opportunity to use it to his advantage) and the woman who said her name was Jocelyn converse. He looked around the room at the others that still hadn't introduced themselves, wondering exactly what it was they were waiting for. His dagger never left his hand, spinning the whole time.

"H-hello?"

at the sound of the voice, Jake snapped his attention to the one who had been passed out since he had seen him. He seemed to have had the roughest time of all, rivaled only by "Captain Cocaine." Smirking, Jacob stood and said "Ah, how nice to see that we weren't lugging around a dead body after all. Come on in and pop a squat, we're doing introductions. Tell us all about how you got to the wonderful world of frozen Oz."  

[xDarkPisces]

Daniel stared at Jocelyn for a long moment, studying her stubborn, resolute countenance with incredulity. Who is this girl... God, what a trip... Daniel attempted to lean away from her steadying hand, trying in vain to appear in control of his situation. Still his head pounded, and still his muscles refused to respond to the simplest of motor commands from his ravaged brain. He opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off by the awakening of another stranger. Will the mysteries never cease?

"Yeah... Since we're all apparently chummy and friendly here... Warm your bones and tell us all how you were driving and suddenly got 'swallowed by a blackish goop' or some s**t..." Daniel made a lazy quotation pantomime with his hands, and fell back against Jocelyn at the loss of balance it caused him. "Damn it... Nobody around here seems to be fessing up with any explanation, so let's just keep talking until we're frozen stiff!" Heaving a sigh, Daniel fell silent again, resolving to let Jocelyn support his unsteady weight.  

[pickle relish]

Nat tugged her hair free from her piggytails as the others introduced themselves, letting the hair fall freely around her face. It was warmer that way, and it also served to hide her face from the others, so she could watch them without them noticing.

Daniel, the druggie, didn't seem too bad, although he cursed a lot. The girl, Jocelyn, was smart enough, but her personality was sort of overbearing. Nat typically got along with people, but perhaps the cold was getting to her. For some reason, Jocelyn was rubbing her the wrong way. Between the violent punk and those two, she was beginning to think she wouldn't get along with any of these people. Annie was alright, and Kirrey, too. There was also the other girl who hadn't introduced herself, and the unconscious man. Maybe those two would turn out to be alright. She hoped so, anyway.

"H-hello?" Nat glanced towards the sound of the voice, and saw the one other man, who was now awake, and had the blanket draped around him. Jacob and Daniel encouraged him to join them at the fire while she studied him closely. She had noticed before that he wasn't wearing a shirt, but she now noticed he was also barefoot. It was a wonder that he hadn't frozen to death out there. He knew even less about what was going on then they did, and he still seemed to be sort of weak. She stood up, walked over to him, and offered him a hand, smiling kindly. "Hey. Come sit and talk with us. It'll warm you up, if nothing else."  

[Bassios]

Annie could sense an argument brewing; Daniel and Jacob were clearly going to have a problem with each other. Jocelyn, whilst well meaning, was very overpowering. It appeared she’d had at least some rudimentary medical training, so they could deal with minor injuries properly. Nat was quiet, clearly trying not to get involved in whatever was about to happen. Annie was about to speak up when Rhysar interrupted from the kitchen,

“Travellers, please, calm down. No one knows why you’re here apart from the mystics. We shall visit them after something to eat. You’ll need your strength; no doubt they’ll send you off on some quest straight away.” Rhysar clearly held a lot of respect in Waerhal, his voice was very calming and reassuring.

Annie spoke next, before anyone else could get in to start any arguments. “My name is Annabelle, I prefer Annie though. I’m 21 and I live in… lived in England. My only useful talent is that I can queue for hours...” Annie tried to inject a little humour here, but no one laughed, “... Okay then. The last thing I remember doing before getting sucked here is meeting with my boyfriend. We built a snowman, had some food and then I had to go home. I got on my train and listened to some music for a bit. Then the train stopped moving and the destination screen started saying ‘Unrecognised destination’ or something like that. The doors slid open and something really, really dark started flowing in. Next thing I know I’m half buried in snow at the bottom of a crater.”

She took a breath and waited for someone to speak, when no one did, she continued. “I don’t know why we’re here, but we must be here for a reason. Instead of arguing with ourselves, let’s wait until we meet the Mystics. They might know something important.” Annie hated being the leader; she also hated taking the role of the leader. Hopefully Jocelyn would take the leader role so Annie could step back a bit.

Kirrey, who had been sat in the kitchen with her father until now, stepped forwards “Seeing as you are all introducing yourselves, I’ll tell you something about myself too. My name, as I have told you all, is Kirrey. My father is Rhysar. This is the village of Waerhal. In Dragontongue it means ‘Steppingstone’. Three days ago a mystic visited this house and told me to prepare for visitors. She told me to go to the iceplains in the north and wait for the arrival of eight visitors. There are only seven of you, which leads me to believe we will encounter the eighth when me move on from here, further south.” Kirrey looked over everyone in the group, “The first thing we will do after meeting the mystics is get you some decent clothes. You have nothing worthwhile to protect you against the cold.”

Rhysar took her last sentence as a cue and announced that the food was ready. “Travellers, your food is ready. We can do nothing without food in our bellies” He smiled warmly at everyone and handed them a large bowl with a kind of stew in it. Annie was starving and immediately set about eating every last drop in the bowl.  

[xDarkPisces]

"Dragontongue... Steppingstone... Where is this all coming from? Look... I may have my vices, but I'm sane enough to know this is all a ruse. None of this can be real. I haven't even had dreams this intense, man..." Daniel spoke with a breathless, almost exasperated air, gasping heavily between sentences, getting more frustrated as he went. "Mystics..." He trailed off and took his stew from Rhysar. Something in the old man's voice warmed his insides and allowed him to forget the cold for a few moments. Staring down into the stew, Daniel sighed half contentedly.

The spoon shook in his hand as he dipped it into the bowl. No amount of mental coaxing could still his muscles, though his headache was beginning to fade and almost all the feeling had returned to his extremities. The girl Jocelyn still supported his weight a bit, but he found his balance starting to stabilize. Still his hands shook. His arms itched. His right eye twitched involuntarily. Stir crazy... I'm going stir crazy. This can't be real. But... I can feel the cold. It's real. No mistake. And these people. They're all just as freaked out as me... Is it... possible? No. No way. I'm a lot of things... "But crazy isn't one of them..." Daniel finished his thought aloud, a habit he'd picked up from a friend back home. He looked around a bit sheepishly. They all think I'm nuts... Absolutely out of my head...

Let's try this... "Look... Maybe we got off to a bad-..." he stopped to cough heavily, holding his stew tenderly to keep it from spilling out. "-... A bad start. It's... It's nice to meet you guys... I just... I really wish I knew what the hell we were... taken for." The words still didn't seem right. "If this is all a fantasy movie trip that I'm on... I sure hope it's over soon. It's just too damned cold here, y'know?"  

[Roland Karloseth]

Jacob accepted the bowl with a nod and a smile. He was a punk, but his mom always tried her best to drill semi-proper etiquette into his head. "Heh... Mom might have been an uptight, prissy woman, but she certainly made things easier living around there..."

Jacob walked through the front door with a grin a mile long on his face, holding a large piece of paper. Looking at him here, when he was in middle school, you would never guess he would have turned out the way he did. His hair was blonde (his natural hair color) instead of black. Wearing sneakers, jeans with a small rip forming in one knee, a Superman t-shirt, a red baseball cap, and a happy carefree attitude was normal wardrobe for him.

"What's that you have there Jake?" His mother asked.

Grinning ear to ear, Jacob unfolded the piece of paper once, revealing his latest art project: A pencil drawing of a still-life, consisting of several things he gathered together in the art classroom and arranged the way he liked it. After waiting about fifteen seconds, he flipped the paper to reveal the words "Superb job, A+" written in red pen.

"Oh! That's very nice! Maybe after a bit you and I can hang it up somewhere together."

Beaming, he nodded his head erratically and took off sprinting for the stairs and his room, totally forgetting about his homework so he could look for a place to hang it. On the way there, his father came out of the room and stood in Jake's way.

"How many times do you have to be told not to run in the house? What's that?" He asked, pointing at the picture in Jacob's hands.

"It's my art project, I got an A+ on it! Mom and I are going to go hang it somewhere after a bit."

"Art, huh?" He said, taking a moment to take a swig of his beer. "You mean out of all the school subjects there are, you choose to excel in art? What about math or science? Here's a fun fact for you: Vincent Van Gogh went ape-s**t and cut off his own ear. Art still sound fun?"

"JOHN!" came the shrill screech from behind him. Jacob turned around and saw a look of fury on his mothers face, a mask that was hiding the true person, the kind mother figure that he had come to respect and adore. She closed her eyes for a couple seconds and took a few deep breaths, and the ugly mask of rage turned transparent, yet still visible. "Jacob, honey, can you please go to your room for a bit so Dad and I can talk?"

Jake simply nodded his head and sprinted up the stairs, taking them two at a time. He closed his door, but it was not enough to drown out the argument between his parents. Curiosity got the better of him, and he laid on the floor next to the air vent, ear to the floor. He was able to make out a lot of the conversation.

"...might kill you to be nice to him? He is your son after all, John! Maybe a little bit of compassion would be nice?"

"It's art, Michelle. ART! God-damnit, who's the last person you talked to that had a successful life as an artist? In this day and age, it's a lost cause, people can just take a picture and have an instant work of art."

"Of course, this is what this is about, how much money he can make. Why the hell are you so obsessed with money? It seems to be the only thing you ever think about anymore!"

"There are bills that need to be paid. You like to eat? I'm the one that makes that possible with my CAREER that actually pays based on skill and not talent or luck! I don't see you bringing any money into this ******** you John, we decided on this from the start. You would work, I would run the house. That's work too. I'll be ******** if I'm going to sit here and take this."

Hearing this, Jacob went over to the window and saw his mother walking out the door. She got in the car and drove off. She would be back the next day, but Jake wouldn't know that until after he got home from school the next day.

The last thing Jake saw before falling asleep was his crumpled up picture hanging halfway out of the trashbin in his room.

Jacob snapped back to reality to see a few people just staring at him, since they noticed him just staring into space. Shaking his head a few times, he said "Woah... random trip down memory lane." With that, he began eating.

After a few minutes, the Daniel spoke up. After he finished, Jacob said "Yeah, no kidding. I just want to go home. Though it might be a bit fun to stay a while, despite the fact that it's so damn cold." After thinking for a few seconds, he laughed a bit and said "Just imagine if we actually had some electronic devices on us, like if I had pocketed my cellphone and my DS. Bet that'd freak a lot of people out. Would probably be fun..." He fell silent after noticing that by that point, everyone was staring at him like he had ostriches poking their heads out of his nostrils. Shaking his head, he went back to eating silently and watching everything that went on.  

[DaisukeOrDark]

Bryce backed away from these people. "I'm... I'm fine. I would just like some cloths." He looked around the room. The smell of food and the fire and all these people was slightly overbearing to him. "He back up more and he hit the door with his back. "I would really like to wake up now...last thing I remember before now this was my room become black and now I hear about dragons... what the ******** is going on?"  

[pickle relish]

Nat drew away from Bryce, took a bowl from Rhysar and sat back down. It was understandable that he was frightened, but it was still a little upsetting that he hadn't accepted her help. She listened to the others talk as she ate, becoming more and more confused. Waerhal? Dragontongue? Mystics? What the hell was this place?  

[WhisperingEternity]

((Summary: Sophia is on vacation in France, gets swept up by the darkness. She wakes up in a forest, and stumbles around until she finds the sled tracks. She follows the tracks to the edge of the forest, but collapses just outside of the village.))

Paris was having a warm spell. Compared to Ontario, it was positively tropical. At least, that was Sophia’s justification for leaving her jacket in her hotel room and sitting outside in just a light sweater. It was unlike her to willingly be outside, but this was her vacation, and she was determined to make the most of it. Besides, she was tired of all the snow back home, so she was enjoying this luxury of bare ground while she could.

It was getting on in the afternoon. Phee had already visited just about every tourist attraction within walking distance, and was now sitting outside a café and writing. She had promised her roommate back home, Maggie, that she would write postcards about everything she’d seen and done. The only postcards Phee had managed to find thus far had been the usual cheap tourist fare, but she intended to find and send a good one as soon as she found it. In the meantime, she was recording all that she’d seen and done in her journal.

Eventually, Phee ran out of things to write about. Closing her notebook, she sat back, intending to people-watch, only to notice that the foot traffic had dwindled almost to nothing. She looked around, wondering what had happened to the crowds, before a movement at the edge of the street caught her eye. A dark rivulet of some unknown liquid was trickling down the gutter. Phee grabbed her notebook off the table, and walked to the edge of the sidewalk to get a closer look.

The trickle in the gutter had turned into a stream of what appeared to be liquid darkness. As she watched, the gutters began to overflow, until a river of darkness raged through the streets. Thigh-deep in this strange liquid, Phee’s instinct to flee to dry ground was overcome by the heaviness that was beginning to spread through her limbs. Unable to move, she could only stare on in horror as a tsunami-like wave of darkness rumbled towards her, sweeping her away. Her last thought before she succumbed to unconsciousness was to hope that her journal wasn’t ruined.

~ ~ ~

Sophia awoke to find herself in a snow-filled crater, surrounded by trees. Her journal, seemingly undamaged by the liquid dark, slid from her chest as she sat up. She looked around in disbelief, but very little about her surroundings seemed familiar. Although the snow and the cold were familiar, she was fairly certain she wasn’t in Canada. Shivers wracked her body, and she put aside questioning what had happened in favour of getting out of the snow.

Phee hauled herself out of the crater, trying to keep the snow off her notebook as she brushed herself off. The forest stretched in every direction around her, giving no indication she could determine as to which way she should go. She started wandering aimlessly, deciding that it was better to keep moving and warm than to be sitting in the cold, waiting to be found.

The first sign of civilization she saw wasn’t particularly promising. After a few minutes of walking, Sophia came across what she guessed were sled tracks, and the tracks of the dogs that likely pulled it. With nothing better to go on, and the cold starting to get to her, she started following the sled tracks.

By the time the trees began to thin, Phee couldn’t feel her hands or feet. She managed to stumble to the edge of the tree line, before collapsing against a tree trunk. Warmth was beginning to spread through her body, which she suspected might not be a good sign, but she simply didn’t have the energy to make it down the rise and into the village she could see before her. She felt tired, and the warmth was welcome after hours of being cold. Sophia’s eyes slid shut, and she fell into unconsciousness for the second time in a few short hours, her journal still firmly in her grasp.  

[YunieCookie]

((giant post is giant o___o))
((this post can pretty much be ignored, just adding in what you've all done already.))


“I’m Kirrey. Here, put this on and help me strap him on the sled,” the girl on the sled said as she handed her a fur coat and jumped off the sled to check on the man. Pulling the coat on, Marie nodded and grabbed his legs, helping lift him onto the sled where another girl was already sitting, looking rather shaken.

They soon picked up two more people, another girl and another man (also passed out), and made short introductions. Soon after, they found a fourth girl who'd been resourceful enough to make herself an igloo.

“Strap yourselves in, the cold will make you sleepy soon and we have a long journey ahead of us,” Kirrey advised, and Marie figured it was best to follow. She was half-asleep when the man she'd found suddenly asked "Alright then, where the hell are we now?" startling her awake. "We sure as hell aren't in Arizona, it almost never snows there. And even when it does, never like this..."

'Where we are is something I'd like to know, too,' she thought to herself as the man trailed off, 'because "here" is for sure not my apartment. Sure, we get snow, but no landscape like this.' Since no answer seemed forth-coming, she allowed herself to zone back out, dozing off as the landscape changed from snow and ice, to trees.

"What the hell... STOP THE SLED. I think there's someone out there." Marie was again suddenly jolted out of a half-sleep she'd been lulled into by the sled and the cold. She somehow managed to be the only one not awake enough to jump out of the sled and assist in carry aboard yet another passed out man. "That is the last time I'm ever falling asleep on a trip. Too many long car rides as a kid, I suppose," she muttered to herself, feeling pretty useless as the other three strapped the man down, before Kirrey resumed ... whatever the proper verb for motion in a sled would be. Marie didn't really feel like bothering to think too much on it.

The latest arrival on the sled interrupted her thoughts, "Just leave me to die! Where... you taking me..." and watched, still half zoned out thinking of verbs, as the man pulled something out of his pocket, bring it to his face, and shout as the wind ripped it away from him before lying still again.

The others on the sled were faster than she was, thinking to check his pockets and toss what they found. One of the other girls, Jocelyn, thanked the other, Natalie, Nat, something like that, for checking the man's pockets and told a bit about herself. Marie nodded to herself when she described the inky water that had swallowed her up, same as herself.

Kirrey finally decided to calm everyone by explaining, sort of, what was going on, and where they were. Something about dragons and mystics and heroes. Maire wasn't sure whether she believed it all, but it was all she really had to go on at this point, and it was better than anything she could come up with for herself.

Shortly after, they came upon... a village, would be Marie's choice to describe where they'd arrived. "Waerhal", Kirrey said it was called. They stopped outside one of the houses, and Kirrey directed them inside. Two of the others, Annie and the man she'd found earlier, carried the other man they'd found in the woods into the house. Everyone else followed, taking up a place around a fire burning inside. Marie chose to sit off to the side, but still near enough that she could feel the heat of the fire.

Kirrey returned, followed by a man she introduced as her father, who welcomed them all and began questioning them and preparing food.

Jacob spoke first, making the obligatory AA joke. He had taken out a dagger and was spinning it while he spoke. 'Dang, good thing he was passed out when I found him,' Marie thought. 'Would not want to have to deal with that in the snow.' His fist had been bloodied when he tried to escape "liquefied shadows" in his car, holding up his bandaged hand. Natalie, Nat, spoke second, tugging on a pigtail. She seemed worried, but nice enough, and cut herself off during her introduction. Then the man from the woods spoke, introducing himself as Daniel, "Don't call me Danny". Marie filed that away, along with Natalie preferring to be called Nat. He seemed awkward, tense, and like the whole thing was a joke to him. The other girl, who seemed to have appointed herself Daniel's caretaker, introduced herself next as Jocelyn. She moved from her place against the wall, where she, like Marie, had been observing the others. She examined the man (who didn't really seem to think he needed it), and then continued on with her introduction. Marie snorted softly, little more than a heavy exhalation, when she expressed her hatred of the cold.
She felt the others as they snuck glances at her, reading the question on their faces, 'who are you?'

"H-hello?" The third man, whom the other yet-introduced girl had found, had woken up. Jacob and Daniel were quick to make their opinions known.

"Ah, how nice to see that we weren't lugging around a dead body after all. Come on in and pop a squat, we're doing introductions. Tell us all about how you got to the wonderful world of frozen Oz."

"Yeah... Since we're all apparently chummy and friendly here... Warm your bones and tell us all how you were driving and suddenly got 'swallowed by a blackish goop'', finger-quotes, "or some s**t...Damn it... Nobody around here seems to be fessing up with any explanation, so let's just keep talking until we're frozen stiff!"

Jacob and Nat had both stood up, but Nat was the one to offer him a hand over the rest of them. "Hey. Come sit and talk with us. It'll warm you up, if nothing else."

Rhysar interrupted before things got too out of hand. “Travellers, please, calm down. No one knows why you’re here apart from the mystics. We shall visit them after something to eat. You’ll need your strength; no doubt they’ll send you off on some quest straight away.”

Annie was next to introduce herself, “My name is Annabelle, I prefer Annie though. I’m 21 and I live in… lived in England. My only useful talent is that I can queue for hours...” Marie smiled a bit at this, finding herself liking the girl a bit already. She continued, “I don’t know why we’re here, but we must be here for a reason. Instead of arguing with ourselves, let’s wait until we meet the Mystics. They might know something important.” Marie agreed completely. They were wasting energy bickering and wondering when they were continuously being told things would be explained soon enough. Perhaps Marie was odd for thinking this way, but, she tried not to trouble herself too much over things she couldn't control.

Rhysar interjected here, handed everyone a bowl of the stew he'd been preparing while they talked among themselves. Marie gave him a small smile back and said a quiet "Thank you" as she took her bowl, happily beginning to eat as her stomach reminded her it hadn't been fed for some hours. She admonished it silently, reminding it that it was, in fact, now being fed and should be grateful she's gotten it out of that hole in the ground.


"Dragontongue... Steppingstone... Where is this all coming from? Look... I may have my vices, but I'm sane enough to know this is all a ruse. None of this can be real. I haven't even had dreams this intense, man..." Daniel sounded as though he was already completely sick of this situation. He trailed off, seemingly lost in thought and concentrating on eating, before faltering to a new start. Marie snorted in agreement when he mentioned the cold. Jacob chimed in, voicing her own thoughts. Nice place to visit, not so great to stay for a long time. Then, with a laugh, "Just imagine if we actually had some electronic devices on us, like if I had pocketed my cellphone and my DS. Bet that'd freak a lot of people out. Would probably be fun..." and reminded her of her own phone, probably sitting on her bed. And Steve. She wondered if he'd un-broken himself and was sitting playing music to an empty room... She shook her head and spooned more stew into her mouth, rejecting the thought. This stew was pretty tasty, actually...

The other man, who Marie had honestly forgotten about while listening to everyone else, backed away from them, bumping against the door to the room he'd emerged from. He said something about just wanting some clothes, and to wake up. Taking a closer look at him, Marie wasn't surprised. He must be freezing without a shirt or shoes, even though the house was quite warm from the fire. Nat drew back from him with her stew, listening to the others.

Marie shrugged and continued to eat, scraping at the bottom of her bowl to get at the last of the warm food it contained. She continued her silence, not having anything to add that hadn't been said already.


((This took faaaaar too long to write and post, I'm sorry guys D: ))