John

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

All I feel about guildfall is that I hope that it doesn't happen again.

Also, status report: the guild was glitching out by then, but I mentioned in the skype group that I had too many things crammed in recently and am working my way out. I think it's mostly sealed now: I'll be away from 6:45 tomorrow all the way until this Sunday morning.

Please feel free to torture take good care of Leila while I'm away. Thank you ;-; and apologies for the frequent absences.

Hopefully I won't miss the tea party entirely?

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Heads up: will be heading off out of town for two days, leaving tonight. And when I comeback on Sunday I'll need to work at a concert thingy, so there might be little activity this weekend. Might not be able to post until next week. Apologies.

If turtle dragon is coming someone please drag Leila along thank

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Japh-Est ship approved.

What on earth are they supposed to do with the turtle dragon weh

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

ok posted and exCUSE ME WHY ARE THE RECENT EVENTS FULL OF THINGS THAT WOULD TRIGGER LEiLA

unacceptable

Poor humans may the Celery Lord bless your souls

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Leila was caught entirely in confusion as a very large number of sudden events were crammed into a very short interval. She couldn’t follow everything, but the last thing she clearly remembered was a loud pink-haired lady who appeared out of the woods had her pulled along with Toby under her arms - supposedly as ‘hostages’ - and screaming the words ‘turtle dragon’ repeatedly.

Also, Leila was almost completely certain that, when she looked at the flowers Ran plucked that were the start of all that fuss - she saw lines of white, pointy teeth lined between its petals.

Then her sight was blinded by Japhet’s flashlight, and Leila stumbled a few steps blindly forwards as Nympha let go of her alleged hostages.

Regaining her foothold, she turned to see Nympha, who had both hands thrusted forwards, and was still yelling:

”TURTLE DRAGON!”

“...what exactly...is a turtle dragon?” Leila asked. The rest of the lot of humans and the Nobodies that accompanied them in their trek into the woods also appeared equally confuzzled.

That is, with the sole exception of Toby, who joined in Nympha in her endless obnoxious chantings of ‘turtle dragon’.

And then the ground started trembling.

* * * * *

”RUN! RUN!”

But her feet stood still. Ace was equally hesitant. Leila looked around in a panic, stumbling in a struggle to not to be shook to the ground by the increasingly intense tremors while searching in vain for an identifiable source of those tremors.

The magnitude of the vibrations increased, and soon it felt like the entire forest was rumbling in accordance.

“Wh-what is happening?”

The deep, angry roar of the turtle dragon boomed through the air.

"ready to tame another dragon, Leila?"

Riley looked at her and smiled but Leila could see under the grin the thick cloak of worry.

“Wait - was that implying that -” that she had tamed at least one dragon prior to this? When - where - did that happen? She didn’t remember ‘taming’ any dragons. But her voice broke before she could finish the sentence and everyone started scurrying in all directions.

Run, away. Away from wherever the turtle dragon was - but she couldn’t tell, because the howls were echoing throughout the entire forest.

Then before she could react to anything, Ran jolted forward and swept her off the ground and kept running with her carried.

“Ey wait-”

Without much time to make sense of all that and suddenly feeling the thorns scrape across her skin as they drove straight into a thicker part of the forst, Leila struggled in protest and that was immediately followed by all of them falling over.

“Lelia? Harper? Are you here?”

Groaning as she struggled to free herself from the vines and branches that were caught on her clothes and hair, Leila yelled back from under the bush that she was stuck in:

“I’m here, I’m alrigh -”

And that was when she saw it: The enormous figure of the creature against the sky, shell covered in earth and vegetation the side of a small island, and deafening roars emitted from its beak-like maw as it slammed its head against a layer of translucent pink in mid-air - and tearing through it, the translucent barrier cracking and then shattering into thousands of pieces.

The titanic creature’s every step shook the ground, and in its path - was it her imagination or was it really happening? No, her imagination wasn’t that good, not will she imagine something as infinitely dreadful. In the path of the turtle dragon, things disintegrated - torn into chunks, shards, flickering like incorrectly loaded graphic files. Then, eventually, reduced to nothing but a cloud of fine dust, lifted upwards into the air - disappearing.

Leila’s eyes widened, she felt her heart sink.

“Run! The tur….tle issssssss cooooom ing.”

The voice stretched, fluctuated in pitch and eventually became completely distorted as Leila watched in horror the running soldier being…sucked away by the dragon.

If you die in Nowhere, you disappear. Forever.

“No, don’t!”

She cried as she lept forwards from the bush, the vines and twigs torn apart as she did so. She tackled the fading figure of the soldier as if by doing so she was keeping him from being struck by some sort of projectile that they could just narrowly dodge. She didn’t know whether it would work - but that was the first thing she thought of and was what she tried because if there was a chance if would save him it would have to be attempted.

For moments she almost imagined that she was back at the Stone of Sacrifice, and the witch was there, and...

The two of them tumbled sideways, down a steep slope in the terrain covered in dead leaves and plants.

When it ended, Leila pushed herself back up, and the first thing she did was to check on the soldier:

“-are you alright? Are you - ”

She thought of shaking him, like trying to wake someone up, but did not. It felt almost unreal as what’s left of the upper body and the half of the face frozen in the terrified expression flickered and broke to pieces, leaking away through the spaces between her fingers and into the air.

Leila snapped back to what was going on. Where was she? She couldn’t see over the slope to anyone who was nearby. She was temporarily out of the area of the dragon’s vortex, but by the winds and trembling trees, not by much. She tried standing up, but couldn’t. She couldn’t tell where the turtle dragon was.

“Harper? Ran? Toby?”

She yelled the names without thinking, the names that she immediately remembered, hoping they were close enough to hear her:

“-Haku?”

She called out before she realized, and choked. But really her mind was too blurry by this point to speak of really realizing anything anyway.

She still found herself unable to move.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Still have to catch up, but writing tonight and hopefully posting soon as well.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Totally not anything to do with Lesley.

I do think that perhaps something along the lines of being stuck in Nowhere would be better than to kill him off, though. At least he's happy or given what Fox usually does to things, not that happy but whatever

Also IC just got intense. Fox what on earth is a turtle dragon supposed to be

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Posted - didn't do anything too radical because I'm currently devoid of all inspiration and dead tired

Leila being very afraid of the dark side this second time around probably isn't going to get any better regardless of whether terrible things happen or not but the tone is set perfectly for the former ok

Fox your call now

Ugh I really hope for more writing time these upcoming weeks

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Leila spent most of her time on the airship sitting in a corner, anxiously tapping her heel repeatedly on the ground and biting her fingernails in attempts to suppress an imminent panic attack.

The dark side.

It had become one of those things that they didn’t talk about - and Leila herself refused to even recall her experiences back at the Stone of Sacrifice. Through her couple of months’ stay at the Queen’s place, her physical wounds had healed entirely, but despite her best efforts to stash them somewhere they could never be seen again, what she still remembered from her encounter with the witch refused to fade away as other memories did in Nowhere.

She didn’t dare react to any comments or conversation directed her way in fear that it would distract her from defying the urge to scream and run away.

But then again, they were on an airship. There’s just so far you can run from anything when you’re carried by a giant craft of metal hovering at the rim of the clouds.

As she looked out of the window, Leila nearly hoped that the airship would be forced to land, somehow, somewhere.

On second thought that was not the best of ideas.

* * * * *

Some commented that you get less afraid of something once you accept that reality that you have have no choice but to deal with it. Leila did not agree as that anxiousness only worsened after they landed, casting sight again upon the woods that marked their entrance to the dark side of Nowhere.

Leila breathed heavily as she stayed alert for any possible motion within the woods, stressing her focus on her sense of hearing as much as her sight because she really couldn’t see far into the darkness. Actually she was afraid to even look into the darkness.

Exposed on all sides, and everything looks the same. It didn’t take much to get horribly lost around here. That was a large part of why she was afraid of this kind of environment.

The constant chattering in the group made it harder, and her much more nervous.

“...Guys? Can you please not -”

She whispered, but decided halfway through that given the fact that a many members of the groups weren’t in good moods to begin with, she probably didn’t want to risk anything that would provoke even more hostility. She looked down at her feet and carried on walking, keeping her irritation and insecurity to herself.

Some soldiers turned on flashlights, leaving Leila wondering why they hadn’t done so earlier. And then she wasn’t exactly sure whether it actually made things better - being able to see a few steps in front of them came at the cost of eyes that are adjusted more to brightness and less to peering into the woods, where dangers potentially lay.

Leila tried persuading herself not to worry because they were travelling with experienced military personnel. They could be trusted. They were going to be okay.

That make her think about Avian and she suddenly felt like vomiting.

Leila gulped and took a few faster steps forward to catch up with Est.

“I think we should turn left on that tree,”

Est said as he jolted the end of his weapon forward in their path, towards a mass of crooked twigs and withering leaves.

That tree looks terribly familiar.

“No.”

A few in the group turned to look at her.

“S-sorry.” Snapping back to the present surroundings, Leila hastily apologized as she tried her best to shake the last remaining mental images of Leon temporarily out of her head.

She did not want to go near that tree. She did not want to go near anything related to the dark side, actually - but it felt like they were hours of hiking into the woods and there was terribly little she could do.

The surrounding forest fell eerily silent when conversations died down.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere

Were exams this week...?

I'd be able to post this weekend (most hopefully), but I would say don't wait on me for the airship jump. I probably won't be able to do any writing tonight.

Sorry about being occupied by a lot of things lately.