londoncallingrpg | Haunted House GP

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Haunted House GP

The house doesn't exist, that's the first thing anyone who might find themselves inside it would want to know. Now, you might ask how one could find themselves inside something that doesn't exist, but you'd honestly be better off asking yourself how you could leave something that doesn't exist. After all, ideas and concepts can't be burnt or broken, and you can't breakdown a door that's not there- Or was there and then decided to be somewhere else for a while...

You wake in a house though, a house that doesn't exist. A house that defies the laws of reality. There are corridors that go on for days, rooms full of nightmares, and millions of doors that lead you anywhere but out. Trapped inside with you are dozens of other people, all searching for an exit, or an explanation.

Behind every door you'll find your darkest fears, maybe even memories you've tried to forget, or secrets you never wanted to share...

(OTA! Here is your first of two Halloween gps! This one is, of course, set in the haunted house where your pup can run into anything you can dream up! Deadly traps! Spooky monsters! An existential crises! Top level your pups waking up or running into danger, and then go ahead and tag other players! Since this is all magic-y and spooky don't worry too much about time lines and who bumped into who first. Only rule is that your pup can't escape until November 1st! Have fun! Also, because there are two GPs going up this week, both are open to new top levels for two whole weeks! And, of course, you can keep tagging long after that if you want. :D I'll post reminders daily on slack.)

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Logan didn't pay attention to tabloids any more, his own family had spent more than enough time filling those pages, and he only nodded a little in understanding.

"Yeah, I get that," he admitted. "There's a common theme in all my pasts- Things I wish I could have erased."

The hall was no longer quite so straight nor quite so featureless as Felix had experienced, as if the maze were adapting to the two of them traveling together. Yet still he could hear the river, ominous, somewhere nearby. "According to the Buddhists, if we were ever to live a life of no regrets, we would pass through this cycle into nirvana," Felix muttered absently. "Yet we are here, and so we must have fucked up."

Logan couldn't know how rare it was for Felix to utter a four-letter curse, pronounced so very clipped and posh and precise. He felt it described the situation most accurately, though.

"You really believe that stuff?" Logan asked, trying a door as they passed it, and scowling when he found it locked. "I don't think there's anything like that, man. I think those are just fairy tales we tell each other- You know, to make death a little less grim and final or whatever."

He looked over at Felix, then gestured around them. "This is just life. Random, fucked up, and inescapable. It's probably not even magic or aliens- We probably got doped by some asshole and are tripping balls in some gross motel room, oblivious to the fact that we're about to have our kidneys stolen."

The strained, raspy sound in Felix's throat was actually meant as a laugh, as much as it sounded like sandpaper. "I sincerely hope that your explanation is the correct one. It is vastly preferable to the idea of being trapped in a maze of magic from which there is no escape. I would be elated to wake up missing a kidney."

"I dunno, man. I'm pretty attached to mine," Logan shrugged, pulling his phone out and holding it up high in search of a signal, then shrugging as he put it away.

"Hey, check out that door up ahead. It looks different than the others. Older."

"Oh, blessed difference," Felix sighed, sending his witch-lights a few steps ahead to illuminate the door. He frowned, and stopped a step behind Logan. It looked familiar, somehow. "It would be foolish not to go in," felix murmured, as if trying to convince himself.

"Could be an exit," Logan nodded, though he didn't sound hopeful.

Someone else, anyone else, might have opened the door with caution. Not Logan though, Logan simply yanked the door open wide and stepped right in- Blinking into the darkness.

"Send those light things in, I can't see a damn thing."

Felix didn't want to. He didn't want to be anywhere near that door. Its shape, its size, its carving... he had seen it before, but he couldn't remember when, or why. But he had already revealed too much of his fear to this total stranger, and he couldn't bear to be seen any weaker than he already was. The lights approached, casting the door and its threshhold in a sickly pale-green glow, but bright enough to see by.

Felix stayed back against the opposite wall.

Logan stepped inside, but it was like stepping into- Nothing. Even with the lights casting a bright glow, the room was just inky black. There was nothing there. Literally nothing...

"That's so weird," Logan said quietly.

"It isn't possible," Felix snapped. The other man's glib attitude was beginning to wear thin, when Felix himself had such difficulty keeping control of his emotions.

Now the roaring of the river was even louder, and Felix pressed his hands to his ears, but he wasn't able to drown out the sound. Now it would come for him, and no matter how far or fast he ran, he wouldn't be able to get away.

Logan turned to look at Felix, then cautiously moved closer to the other man.

"Hey, hey, come on, calm down," he said, his voice firm, solid sounding. "Calm down. You want to get out of here? Then you need to get your shit together. I know this is fucked up, I get it, but if you panic this place wins. That's what it wants, right? This place, whatever it is, it's built to prey on fear, man."

Because Logan had been tested like this before. Not here, but- Another life. A life on some weird island that faded in and out of his memories.

Of course, Logan was correct. Felix realized it, logically, in the part of his mind that processed logical thought. But reason, learning and logic were relatively recent developments in the mind of Felix Harrowgate. Fear had found a comfortable home there since Felix was four years old -- since Keeper, and the scourge, and the river. He had an ocean of fear to feed on.

All he had to fight that drowning ocean was his anger. He had to get angry, or else be devoured by the thing that fed on fear. His eyes snapped open, and fixed on Logan, warning. Felix gave every sign of not wanting to be touched, or even approached; he felt he might bite if Logan got any closer.

Somehow, he managed to pull his hands away from his ears, though he curled them into fists immediately. "It wants to drown me," Felix grated out, the words dragged from him only half-willingly. "The river keeps getting louder."

"Except you're not drowning, okay. Look at me, you're here, you're fine," Logan promised, giving Felix some space, but staying near.

"I promise, man- I wont let you drown, alright?" he said, his voice softer now.

His mind flashed on a memory, Being in the service- Doing things he was sure he hadn't done in this life. The brotherhood of the military, and a strange feeling of confidence that was still new to him somehow.

"Come on, get your shit together Felix," he said, keeping his tone light but words firm. "This place is magic, you're clearly magic- So let's figure it out. There must be some spell or something you can cast. ...Something to guide us? A map? Anything?"

Felix tried to deny it, started to brush Logan off and push him away. His magic didn't work that way, he wanted to say. Cabaline magic was grander, wider, more theoretical and less practical. But the moment he thought it, the very moment he started to speak it, Felix remembered that not all the magic he knew was, strictly, Cabaline.

He was fighting fear in this place, fighting the repetition of old fears that made up nightmares. And Felix knew a ward against nightmares. What was his dream-ward, after all, if not protection from fear?

"Come here," Felix said abruptly, lifting his right hand and curling his fingers in a summoning gesture toward Logan's forehead. His voice was still breathless, his words tight, but he was thinking. "I can ward your mind against dreams. I don't know if it will work, or if we will even still be in the same place, but it should... it might... let us both see this place more clearly."

Logan looked unsure, clearly reluctant to let magic get that close to him. He'd seen enough by now to accept that the universe was full of crazy bullshit, but that didn't mean he wanted it on him or in his head.

"This isn't going to have a long list of shitty side effects is it? You know, like back alley Viagra from Tijuana..."

Felix curled his fingers in, and gave Logan a raised-brow look. "If you're in the market for back-alley drugs in Tijuana, are you really terribly concerned about your health?" He sighed, briefly. "I've never tried this on a wakeful mind. The intended effect is sleep un-affected by nightmares, by which I suppose you might consider 'sleep' a side effect. If I remove the symbol for 'sleep' from the ward, I believe I can, instead, ward your mind against the conditions of nightmare. I don't know that it will work, but at the very least, it won't harm you."

He tilted his head slightly after that explanation, as if to say, Enough for you?

"Yeah, I only got about a third of that. Just go for it," Logan shrugged.

Were this not a life-and-death situation, Felix might find this fellow very trying indeed. He gave Logan a mildly exasperated look, but reached out and brushed his fingertips across Logan's forehead. The symbols he traced were arcane, but familiar to him, and his magic flowed easily into the pathways he laid out for it.

Without the component of sleep, the spell guarded Logan's mind from the dangerous seductions that created nightmares: deeply-held fears, anxiety, and the inability to regulate the mind's processes. Felix could only theorize that this place, whatever it was, fed on the same fuel that fed nightmares.

He spoke a few whisper-soft syllables, and lifted his hand away. Then he took a deep breath and watched Logan thoughtfully.

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Haunted House GP

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