impacter | THE ROSE WITCH

THE ROSE WITCH - SOLOMON

[You're not sure when you received the envelope.

It slides into your belongings when you're not looking. Small, quaint, the seal of a rose in blue rather than red.

The same rose as before. The same request as before.

The writing is done by hand. But the pen seems unsteady.

---

Would you tell me?

Tell me, please, what would you give for a wish?

Dear Troupe, are you like all the rest? Or are you different now? Were you ever different? Will you ever be different?

Can you find a path forward when the world says you can only go left or right?

Show me. Find me. I want to build a path together.

Okay?]

-------------------------------------

[For those of you who have known of the tower, you know when you last heard from its Witch. The doors, forced open, but one left behind. Coated in black roses. Unable to be freed, unable to progress. And as the way of escape closed to the rainbow roads leading into the stars, only the Witch was left behind. Only the Witch, always the Witch, smothered until nothing was left but petals of black in the silent creaking of doors.

---

If your character follows the written note, they will find their entry much the same as before. The subway greets them like a stranger, though they find their space occupied now. Filled with shadowy silhouettes. They are not like the Extras. They do not talk, they do not interact. They do not see you.

You are you. The rest are the rest.

And even before you step into the halls of the tower, there is an odd malaise that settles over you. An odd sense of separation, as though every way you look, there is glass between yourself and your surroundings. The roses are no longer red, but a deep, deep blue. Blue, blue, blue, like

the bottom of the ocean

All school roles are the same, and Extras still wander the halls, though they seem far more like apparitions. Though you can speak to Extras, and they will interact to you if prompted, you find you cannot touch them. You find their gossip is far more muted. They still speak of you, but they never seem to notice you're standing right there. They do realize it's you they're talking about, right?

Right?

--

The longer your character stays in the school, multiple things will start to happen:
- They will feel a deep loneliness sinking into their bones. Interacting with others will alleviate it slightly, but it will take effort to feel like a team. The longer they are there, the harder it is to fight.
- All characters have their memories intact on arrival, but it seems for every day spent, random memories from their past start to shed away. The oldest are at the most risk. The details grow fuzzier and fuzzier. What was important to you once? What is important to you now? Will you remember, from day to day? Does it matter?

Your character may recognize others from their previous troupe, or they may be surrounded by strangers. The school's layout has not changed much, outside some key exceptions:

- The go-karts are missing entirely. The room has been replaced with an observatory similar to the one once found in the chapel. The constellations change every time you look into the skybox, but are never quite familiar enough. At random points in the day, you might see the sky in the observatory flicker to a brilliantly unnatural white, or to a deep and unforgiving purple, before returning to normal. Sorry about your eyes.
- The chapel is back to the way it had originally started. It does not change. If you stay too long, the windows that show your sins will start to move for everyone in the space, and you can swear you hear voices calling from the glass, echoing the sounds of your memories.
- Reading through the library, you will find that in many books, regardless of subject or location, you find stories about yourself. Details stripped and greatly exaggerated, if you didn't remember yourself so well it would seem like a cruel joke. But every story you find in succession seems to twist more and more, further and further into something monstrous, filled with malice and fear. The Extras gossip will change to match the stories found in the Library, no matter how cruel they turn.
- Spending too much time near or inside the pool will have a negative effect. It may start as general unease, slowly increasing to a mental and physical pain that's hard to place, as though an unfathomable weight is pressing against you on all sides. You will have an urge to run as far as possible, to the nearest available light source, where you must stay for the effect to diminish.
- Every ingredient in the kitchen is unrecognizable. You will have to trial and error your way through your cooking.
- The elevator to the Backrooms will take you down, but every hallway loops in on itself. Waterfalls flip upside down, walkways that were dry one moment are wet the next. Disorienting, frustrating, and leading nowhere. Every once in a while, a star can be found grooved into the tiles, as though something might fit. Maybe it's just decoration.

---

The rules of your engagement for Father are presented, not by your Dramaturge, but by a sheep. A bell around its neck and a pink ribbon tied to one horn, it seems to always be roaming around the school, and its bell is all you hear when it herds you into the chapel. Staring, as a sheep does, unable to talk, as the same set of rules descends in writing to plaster permanently into the main altar area. There is no one there to answer your questions this time (the sheep certainly isn't going to!), though perhaps you might be kind enough to explain to the panicked strangers among your midst.

It is only when you leave the chapel that your phone pings. A username only called STAR.]

Oh no!

I missed everyone again?? I'm really sorry.

I hope Father wasn't too mad. He's good at that.

But don't worry! I'll find a way to meet all of you. :)

Why don't you tell me your favorite spot, and I'll come find you? You're probably confused. Unless you're certain people who aren't!

Isn't it interesting that way? I wonder if they remember why they remember! I wonder if they'll tell. Or will we pinky promise to take it to our graves?

Anyway! You're not gonna be able to respond, but you can tell Ibuki, and Ibuki will tell me, okay?

They remember a lot for being a sheep. But maybe it's better to ask a sheep than to ask a person!

:)

-☆

----

[OOC: Please use this as an AU space for Rose Witch!Solomon. I'm sorry in advance. You may prompt however you'd like, or you can come DM me on discord if you want something a little more unique. I will treat everyone as the same Troupe instance unless you specifically request to be alone in a separate Troupe.]

Threaded | Flat

[ Funny that he would take this chance again, as Fandaniel — or Amon, which he has fallen back into using out there among Char's stars — cannot think of any wish he could possibly desire. Perhaps, then, it is boredom that drew him, or even some worrisome desire to seek him out, that fool, the one he had doomed to this fate by his own request.

It was not guilt by any stretch. It was more so that it felt like a debt owed, one sorcerer to another, although he once again finds himself without any of his magic. It is some luck that he no longer needs it to make his body function properly, for where Solomon came out of the deal doomed, Amon came out of it alive, when he was meant to be dead.

Alive and somewhat changed. Hair a dark grey-green and grown out by now, braided loosely and long enough to let sit over one shoulder, and eyes a sharp sea green, marking what was what Asahi's body as truly Amon's now. Now he stands in that same practice room with that same piano, dressed once again in his prim and proper teacher's outfit, wondering if it might not end up covered in blood once more. Only this time he carries no knife nor any scalpel, nor any other weapon of the sort.

He had tried to stab Sika Madu once. It had not gone well.

He does not expect stabbing Solomon to go over any better these days.

But yes, here he is, waiting at the piano, and it's humorous enough to him to be the one taking the seat at its bench and idly plinking away at a few keys. He isn't unknowledgeable of the instrument, of course. He is, after all, Amon the Prodigy. Ah, but it never did quite hold his attention like so many other disciplines. Still, enough comes back to him to let him begin to play something simple and classical enough, at least by Allagan standards, while he waits for the inevitable. ]

[Here we go again.

Lilia isn't exactly thrilled to be back here, and it shows in the way he stares for a long, long moment at the blue ring gracing his finger. But eventually, he does get a move on.

He's still considered a student, of course. Why wouldn't he?]

Ibuki, was it...?

[ He has received several letters in the past while, strange as that sounds. Bills, for the small apartments they've all shoved themselves into. Acceptances, for some of them, for Yugamu himself. Junk, mundane little things that seem so horribly domestic for a group of ex-warmongers. The seal of a rose comes in the midst of a week of studying, nestled among the textbooks and notes that make up his small desk. The thought to get rid of it is what springs to mind first, because—

Yugamu hasn't killed in years. The only deaths he deals with are those in his textbooks, on the news, on the cadavers they practice on. His infuser sits in a desk drawer, something he stares at now and then before locking it up tight, letting the metal gather dust. The only blades in his hands now are cooking knives and scalpels.

And yet, as Yugamu's feet trek familiar paths wearing that familiar princely uniform, that weight is at his side again. For a moment, he's 17 again, feet taking him this way once again with the heavy weight of a condemnation weighing on his shoulders. The parking garage is as desolate as it always is, even moreso now, and the sense of nostalgia it brings is tinged with the same sense of melancholy the graves outside the academy had.

Four names to carry then, only to add another to the pile. The fact the last is not quite a death does little to ease the discomfort. When he passes the blue, so deep you could drown, something coils tight around his ribcage and seeps through the bone. Pressure, steadily rising, like sinking further into the water.

The roof is quiet and bright. The skybox flickers. The sheep had asked for a favorite spot, and he provided.

All he can do now is wait, he supposes. He sits on the edge, not quite looking at the sun, but not quite looking at the entrance, either; looking out into the faux horizon like it'd tell him something he actually wants to hear. ]

[ And once more, Fandaniel is in the infirmary. So it goes, only this time, rather than an unexpected neck biting, he managed to rile up some unknown who had come in with the rest of the Troupe; not someone he recognized from the previous group, thus far less forgiving of the former ascian's antics.

He's pushed his braid aside as he works, yet again, at fixing himself up. It's as if nothing has changed at all! With him staring intently in the infirmary's little mirror as he stitches up a cut along the cheekbone. This time, his blood is fresh and red, and he grimaces at each stab of the needle, at each tug of the flesh, the pain now brighter and sharper than it had been in the past, during his first run of this wretched tower. Being actually alive certainly is a drag at times, although he can't quite claim the cons outweigh those of being a barely functional body run by magic. ]

...at least now I know who cannot possibly take a joke.

[ A sigh, overly dramatic as always, though to himself alone, or so he thinks, anyway. ]

[Here again. Bound again. This time, he accepted because he wanted to. This irritable mage. A fool. A man who thought he could bear the weight of it all on his own.]

[Again, the weight of playing human is unbearable. He trudges along through the familiar corridors, shies away from the shadows. He finds a place that he once loved - the pool. Serene. Lovely. A shadow of the ocean, but...]

[What....is this feeling?]

[His skin feels like its boiling. Even as he moves, his bones - or what little he has made in semblance of them - are cracking. He's trying to fight the fear physically - stubborn to the extremes.]

[He aims a dour glance at the walls around him.]

Even your fears are leaking into such things. Solomon. How pathetic.

Threaded | Flat

meet me at the piano u b

no subject

pvp me on the roof

for yugamu we're hijacking the post; cw for blood ofc

the pool...