[open] spooky scary for october time

[invasif]

Who: Ilde & Open
Where: the Temple
When: Early October
Rating PG13 for spooks
What: Ilde is trying to find some method to the madness of canon powers flickering on and off. Which involves using hers when they're on: too bad she's a fear manipulator. Happy Halloween :9 OOC post for plotting if you need it!

You are likely minding your own business in walking past her rooms, she doesn't pick you because she knows you or has anything against you, certainly. She picks you because she needs a victim in her experiments, nothing more than that. There is no warning or prelude, walking in of the open door to her room seems to transport you into a nightmare. The already ancient ruins of the temple grow dark and further encroached upon by nature: riddled with lichens and slime. There is no longer any light save for the window she is sitting in front of, a lightning storm at her back.

The interior of her room now seems more like a dungeon, and she much more like a terrible witch. Her black dress, cloak, and crown all seem to be made of swirling burnt ash and there is some infernal thing glowing like fire on a chain around her neck.

She rests her cheek against the back of one hand... wondering how long she can maintain the illusion and to what degree before it flickers away from her again. It would also be a lie to say she wasn't also curious to know how much terror each visitor can tolerate. It's always useful to know who is resistant to her powers before a situation becomes dire.

Snakes writhe on the floor of her room, and she invites pleasantly, "Come in."

Comments

[invasif]

"It seems to come and go," she says airily. "I was sitting here to see if there was any pattern, and how well I could control it."

Things shift and squirm, as though the walls are somehow alive.

[cuedoves]

Zuko takes a step away, still glancing between her and the shifting and squirming motions.

"Wait--- this is you?" He was willing to chalk it up to the general weirdness, but his eyes narrow. "You're doing... all this?"

He gestures vaguely at the aforementioned things.

[invasif]

"Yes, I think so," as if she doesn't know. As if she hasn't practiced this a hundred times before, as if she hadn't terrorized anyone who came near her palace with visions of fire and death.

"How does it feel, to you?"

[cuedoves]

Instead of answering the question, he sidesteps it and follows it up with another. He's still very much on guard, even more so now.

"How?"

And how can she just think so? "You don't know if you're doing it for sure?"

[invasif]

"You aren't... frightened, at all?"

For a moment, the air in the room seems to squeeze him. A dizzying wash of darkness and panic. But it's just a moment, released just as easily. Rather than acknowledge whether or not she does this on purpose, she muses,

"It all seems rather frightening to me."

sorry for the delay!!

[cuedoves]

Well, that about clinches it. It's definitely her doing this --- but no, if he is unnerved at all, it doesn't show. He narrows his eyes at the feeling -- but once it's passed, he advances on her, fist outstretched.

"Enough! Stop messing with me!"

His firebending is working intermittently. Lately, he's not been one to pick fights (at least, compared to how he was), but all of this is really pushing him towards the edge. His temper is still intact, after all! Plus, there's a lot about this situation to be unnerved by.

[invasif]

The Lady of Cinders watches the firebender's temper flare, her head tilting slightly. The charm around her neck -- the charm filled with the ashes of a dead firelord -- glows warmly in recognition. She had never known the firelord when he was a boy, she had met King Dreus well into his adulthood, but she wonders if he was like this. She had heard he was rather a charming young man, until the madness had started to take him. Imagining Dreus as a boy is at odds with her last memories of him: boiling to death from inside on his own magic.

Until she had smothered him herself.

She gestures with one hand, scattering droplets of flame in every direction. All that had been dark and wet goes up in flames. It's an illusion, like all the rest of it. Damaging only in belief, not in reality. The heat imaginary, but terrible.

"You're a tempestuous boy."