TDM 1.

[exsangui]

Hey guys, it's the first Test Drive Meme! Please note you do not have to app a character to play in here, and this is only game canon if you want it to be-- this is set up to be a freaky dream your character has pre-game, and maybe your character remembers, maybe they don't! It's left purposefully open-ended, because this is dream logic, so feel free to go off the rails if you're feeling creative.

CW: death, blood, (optional) harm to animals. Please warn if your thread has animal harm in it.

Since this is a dream, death is not permanent. Characters 'killed' in this log may find themselves coming back to life at any point, in any way.

𝕿𝖊𝖘𝖙 𝕯𝖗𝖎𝖛𝖊 𝕸𝖊𝖒𝖊: 𝟏

You awake in a strange dreamscape, without memory of how you got there. You walk through clouds, under a beautiful sky. You see others walking with you.

The sky starts to swirl into a strange shape: a face.



「You are mine, and I am yours. Great gifts have been bestowed. Within you now lives a terrible purpose.」 They say.

Suddenly, you know what vampire abilities you possess. It's as though the face spoke to you directly and whispered them in your ear.

The sky changes, like a storm is coming over sea. You feel grass bloom under your feet. Then cold. Then snow. Before you stands a cold, decrepit castle. Yet cheering can be heard inside: humans cheer and warmth radiates from inside. They beckon you to come in, you're just in time for the feast!

The feast itself takes place in a medieval castle, kept warm by the heavy tapestries over stone walls. Yet the people inside it seem to be clothed in more industrial era garments. They sing and laugh, joking as they serve you copious amounts of meat. Some of it is well-cooked and seasoned. Some of it is still raw and rare. All of it is recognizably fresh, and from an animal.

They chatter happily, about how lucky they are to be here, safe and inside the Lord's castle. He wasn't doing anything with it anyway!

As time goes on, it becomes evident this castle was taken over, hostile, from its previous owners. A rich lord and lady would not allow anyone inside, despite the frost. You begin to notice people around you, smiling and laughing, are very thin from hunger. Many have missing or blackened toes and fingers. Many are covered in blood, and from their joy, it is not theirs.

Several people, once the first few songs are done, ask you to aid the wounded-- they are similarly poor, and far more injured. Honorable injuries, these are, you're informed, got 'em storming this here castle.

The desire to drink from their wounds is overwhelming. Some even seem to recognize it. Come here, they say, it'll put an end to the pain.

If you drink, you will be rewarded. Your head will clear. You will feel stronger, safer, more yourself than you ever have before.

Others may hear screaming from the topmost rooms of the castle. It seems the young children of the dead nobles are still locked inside. They beg to be freed, to be saved. Upon hearing them, the festivities pause. The slightest hint of sympathy toward these children is met with violence.

You are chased from the castle into a verdant, if dark and foreboding, forest.



You walk through what now feels like spring weather, dark and hot and humid. The foliage is thick, the plants hang low, and each trudging step feels endless.

Your hunger grows, especially if you didn't feed on the wounded. Yet regardless, it is harder and harder to stop yourself from feasting on the fat, lazy wildlife that trudges through the underbrush. Deer, elk and boar are most common. They seem to watch you from the treeline with suspicious eyes, and barely make an effort if you destroy them.

IF YOU FED ON THE WOUNDED: You come across a red altar of blood and bone in a forest clearing. It asks you to sacrifice whatever you can give. Is that a memory? A fellow traveler? All you know is that it hungers like you hunger: for blood. If you make a sacrifice of any kind, it will be kept forever, safe and unmoving.

Yet you can hear something in the depths of the altar, as though they've slipped into the center and gotten stuck. If you work very hard to save them, tearing at the blood and the bone, you will soon find the altar enveloping you.

Who will save you? Or was that their sacrifice all along?

IF YOU ONLY FED ON ANIMALS: You come across a forest clearing with strange trees standing ominous and alone. Fawns, small rabbits, and little brown birds sit among the branches.

The sky grows dark. Time seems to pass with horrible foreboding. And then-- the animals attack. All at once, furious bites and pecks and kicks, and there is little you can do against an assault of this kind.

Except, perhaps, run, and hope someone will try to save you.

IF YOU DID NOT FEED: You find your way to strange monoliths at the edge of a field. You feel instantly better once you've left the treeline, but you can't escape the feeling that eyes are on you. And look at that-- a person holding a snake stands at the highest peak.

"Come join me!" they say, but the climb is laborious. It's basically impossible without help. A long, steep climb, but you can make it, and once you do, the person who beckoned you is gone.

Sitting at the top of the monolith, you can see the forest, the castle stretching out in the distance, and even the clouds you walked on to get there. You know this is a dream. You know you'll wake soon.

And you are so thirsty.

NAVIGATION.
img credit reachartwork & ai_curio.

Comments

[rhenalfailure]

She did this.

She did this, and his nails are anchored into the mass of her shoulder, as if to promise that if he succumbs, she’ll fall, too. Her body pitches backwards, his lurches forwards, and— it could be a difference of degrees. It could be miles. It isn’t enough.

But between the two of them, they don’t lose ground.

And something in him twists under that knowledge. Strains against the confines of this conjured landscape in the same way his bones strain beneath his skin.

He pries the dream apart at its seams.

His broad-set features sharpen to knifing edges, coalesce into a snapping maw full of long fangs, skin gone sallow and gaunt, changed in an instant. A single second. And when he drives the whole of himself forward as the altar splinters like sheets of brittle frost for trying to hold him, those inhuman teeth are close enough to Ellie that they snap deep into the junction between her shoulder and neck, biting down like a monstrous vice.

It isn’t retribution. He’s too afraid for that.

Too senseless.

[goty]

It should scare her more, yet it feels right. Maybe it's the dream, or the long-held hope for a more fantastical world, where creeping monstrosities can be escaped. And now, a new terror, facing her full on. She deserves it.

She stares into those black eyes.

"I'll fix it," she says, "I promise."

1/2

[rhenalfailure]

He makes himself a horror. Wounds her, snaps his teeth like an animal caught, and her response—

2/2

[rhenalfailure]

Her response is merciful. Or remorseful. Or.

Pained.

And because of it, almost as rapidly as that burst of febrile hatred had set in, he sinks into her offered assurances: carefully stills— his bloodied claws peeling away from her skin, exhaling slow through flared nostrils in the mirror image of an animal run too hard, inhuman features receding into their own rightful, wearied placement. Someone else might have sense enough to be wary after being shoved.

Not him.

Ensnared to the midpoint of his arm, he pins himself fully to her resolve. However she intends to resolve this.

[goty]

She hates that she's weeping, but it's too much not to. At least she doesn't cry out, make those awful noises she always does. No, she just pulls at him, trying to undo the things she did.

The altar releases him, inch by exhausting inch. Nothing important's ever been easy, so she assumes this is some life lesson she's been too fucking dumb to get before now. It feels, every day, like she missed all of them.

Once free, she falls backward, and they collapse into a bloody pile on the mossy ground.

[rhenalfailure]

Time means nothing here. It means little to Dettlaff besides, given the stretch of centuries compared to minutes. Hours. Days.

They fall to soft earth, and for a long beat, Dettlaff opts not to move. Hands folded vaguely across his own midsection, fingers still tacky with drying blood, the feel of it clotting beneath the edges of his nails. The ring pressed to his knuckles resting heavy.

He doesn’t clear his throat, so much as exhales a fresher dose of tension, attention twisting at last when he looks to her.

“Thank you.”

[goty]

Ellie feels time acutely. She's already scrambling up on skinny legs, dazed and disappointed with it. "Don't thank me," she grumbles. "I fucking did it."

[rhenalfailure]

True. And while he could also argue that she remedied it, he simply rolls his spine as he sits upright at last, elbows resting heavy over his knees. The air is thick with uneasiness, but what point is there in running from it? They’ve nowhere left to go.

“Why did you?”

Whether he means shoving him to it, or saving him from it, he doesn’t specify.

[goty]

"I wanted the voice to stop," she says, assuming he's asking why she pushed him. But the bloody, struggling body in the altar just reminded her of Joel, and it was more productive to fight back than to hurl up what little food she had left in her.

"...Did you hear it?" Has she finally lost her mind?

[rhenalfailure]

He eyes the damp track marks across her cheeks, glistening in waning light. The briefest draw for the whole of his attention— before his stare resets.

“I am used to it. Something similar. I have been for some time, now.” She’s seen what he is. Perhaps that explanation speaks for itself. “It will get easier, so long as you resist.”

When he rises, he reconsiders his earlier decision: she seems decidedly human, or something near to it. Enough that the miasmic cling must be overwhelming to her senses— or her sense of self. His posture angles back towards the way they’d arrived, rust-colored fingers raised.

“We should leave this place. Try to find another way out.”

[goty]

It'll get easier. Everybody said that, when they came back. It didn't get easier. It just got harder and harder, until she couldn't sleep, could barely breathe. Maybe this place is what she deserves.

Does the presence Dina finds in her temples believe in these dark places?

"You think there's a way out?" Her voice sounds childish, hopeful. Dumb as fuck.

[rhenalfailure]

Maybe that makes two of them.

“My friend was often fond of musing over hypotheticals. Thoughts flew to him endlessly. He told me once, ‘Everything that begins, must also have an end.’”

Dettlaff walks as though they’ve somewhere to be. Leading as though confidence alone will save them, even through the sickly tread of malformed space.

But—

“He was little more than half formed sinew and tissue at the time. Prone to speak, simply to fill the silence.”

[goty]

She follows him, because she is so tired of walking alone.

"You talk to dead people a lot?" There isn't as much judgement in her voice as there should be. She dreams of death constantly. She talks to the dead whenever she closes her eyes. If death is an element, she breathes it, and she was a fool to ever think otherwise.

[rhenalfailure]

“Only the ones that aspire to make more of themselves.”

This is a joke, though he does not smile, and his gritted voice fails to rise in pitch as it should.

“And it was the dead that spoke to me, first.”

Which is...not a joke. His discovery of Regis’ body— if it could be called so much as that— was hardly accidental. Still, he pauses there: head canting towards his shoulder, turning slightly for the sake of looking at her. The sky swims overhead.

“...This must sound strange to you.”

[goty]

She's too tired-- to ground down by her own foolishness, her own hunger and loss-- to let herself be shocked. There's little appeal in quips and deflection. Everything just is, and it's her fault it's that way.

"I talk to dead people all the time." Mostly in dreams, but still. Who's to say this isn't one? Maybe Abby killed her on that beach, and it's finally over. Her fingers sure don't hurt anymore.

"They just don't usually talk back."

[rhenalfailure]

He watches her a moment longer, frigid gaze flickering with contemplative thought. Her misery is palpable. It beats against his senses with all the force of a shoreline in a storm, and nothing in this shifting landscape could distract from that simple truth.

"Would you prefer it if they did?"

[goty]

It doesn't take much consideration. The thought of Joel reaching out to her, once cherished, now feel like glass in the palm.

"I don't think I'd like what they had to say. Not as chatty as your guy."

[rhenalfailure]

"Few are," he agrees, glancing away once more, and it is less about his own companion's academic nature than it is about death itself, in the broadest sense.

Humans are quick-lived creatures. It is to some extent what has so often made them seem overwhelmingly similar to his mind: easier to notice the obvious traits— the pettier ones, threatening and resentful so inherently cyclical that they sink into sameness— foreign, and uncomfortable for it. And though Regis had tried, it was only Rhea who altered that opinion, sudden as breaking glass for all her fearlessness. De la Croix, his memory barbed and warm and aching.

The fingers of Dettlaff's right hand twitch, thoughtlessly.

Footsteps heavy through rusted moss, treeline bending in a breeze that can't be felt; he is certain they walk in circles, but for now there's an uneasy darkness clinging to the edges of his own peripheral vision— as if the world itself is masking the edges of its own limitations.

Or simply herding them.

[goty]

They walk, and Ellie sees shapes in the darkness. She tenses, but they aren't shamblers, or their less lethal cousins. Statues. They're statues carved from trees, shaped like people in prayer, their feet disappearing into the ground, dead roots holding them in place.

She hates when her dreams get all fucking metaphorical, but at least she's not running down that fucking hallway again.

"What's with these statues?" She shoves one's face. It doesn't budge. "They look like they're praying."

[rhenalfailure]

When he tenses, it isn’t owing to the shape of shadows in the mist; he sticks close to her side— sharpened fingertips faintly flexed— until she’s shoving at those statues without any sign of definitive response.

“I've not seen this place before.”

He would have recognized it in wandering.

“Perhaps this is the fate of those who fail to escape the nightmare. Or those who have willingly surrendered to it.”

And— to his credit, he does try. To emulate Regis for a moment as he studies those carved faces from over the rise of her shoulder. Cut bark, smooth until entangled roots run deep into the earth. Admittedly his efforts remain a poor facsimile of a sharp, rabbiting mind, but it’s all they have.

He notes the direction they face. Their hauntingly shadowed expressions. The air is stale. Ancient.

"...or sacred earth, if such a thing exists in conjured dreams— which I assume this maddening magic must be.”

A pause, before, tentatively:

“Unless you know more about this place than I.”

[goty]

"I don't know shit," Ellie says, trying for funny and just managing tired. She runs her fingers over the statue's face, noticing that paint has long ago chipped off.

"I think these were precious to somebody, once." She remembers the murals all over Seattle. "I wonder where they went."

[rhenalfailure]

He thinks back towards the fete. The sickly stench of blood. The satisfaction of it, cloying and hot across his tongue, intermingled with fury rising like bile in his throat.

It churns in his stomach now. Potent as if the past was present, fingertips curling against the leather of his coat, gouging thin scratches with sharp nails. His teeth grit. His jaw works.

When he wrests for control, it’s a visible thing.

“When I first arrived, I witnessed a celebration. The hosts themselves were starved, even as they feasted. Perhaps unrelated, but it isn’t uncommon for humans to roam, when hostile conditions press upon them.”

Abandoning the sacred as much as the rotting. In the past, that had provided sanctuary— for himself, for the lesser vampiric creatures who drove to him in flocks. For Regis, little more than a smear of sickly gore.

“The futility of momentary survival.”

[goty]

"Humans?" She looks over her shoulder, squinting. "And what are you supposed to be?"

He's strange, but there's a certain trust that comes from near-destruction. Or maybe that's all in her head. She remembers wanting to die when she was younger-- “The futility of momentary survival.”-- maybe it's like that.

[rhenalfailure]

He looks to her, and though the answer is simple, he gives her none.

Instead Dettlaff’s expression stiffens at its edges, his fingertips slackened in trade— he reaches out with a fainter motion, beckoning in a way that doesn’t quite mirror the common gesture.

“Let me see your shoulder.”

The one he’d desperately injured.