User blog:Click here for cookies/The Dream Team Wiki Battle to the Death - Chapter 8

I’m so sorry for not posting; I’m having writer’s block now that there’s no outline to go off of and not much plot development. Plus everyone’s leaving so they won’t see this anyways ;-;

(TW: Repeating words)

Anyways, enjoy!

Chapter 8

I wake up under a hot, bright light.

I’m lying in the woods, and I’m guessing it’s around midnight. Yeetmoi is sponging my face with a bright, fluffy golden sponge. Two other worried faces are surrounding me: Just, wearing an expression of pure relief at my consciousness, and Knight, splashing potions over me.

I sit up, sopping with all the colors of sunset. “Where are we?”

“In the westmost corner of the woods, next to the mountains,” replies Just. I turn and see that the type of woods we’re in is an oak-dark oak combination; we’re a couple miles from the nearest mountain, with a trail visible even from here.

“What are we doing here?” I know how frustrating it is to have someone ask you tons of questions at once, and you don’t know how to answer.

Yeetmoi sits back tiredly. “We’ve been secluded on purpose, waiting for you to wake up.”

“Hey, that reminds me, Click,” says Knight, filling his empty potion bottles with water from a stream nearby. “How did you survive?”

“Survive what?”

“Do you not remember?” says Just, looking worried.

I think hard. What was I doing before I fell unconscious? The last thing I remember is feeling a rush of pride for Just at handling the Withers for everyone, and… and… oh, no. “Where’s Yacmef?” I say, suddenly feeling full of adrenaline and anxiety.

“What?”

I stand up and start pacing impatiently, willing for them to understand me. “Yacmef! The person we’re all fighting against!”

“I’ve never heard of anyone named Yacmef,” Yeet says, confused. “Click, are you sure you’re okay? What’s this about fighting?”

“Yeet,” I say, staring at her, panicked. “Where are we right now?”

“In the woods.”

“Where are the woods?”

“Outside of my backyard.” Yeet reaches to touch my forehead. “She’s cool,” she murmurs to Just and Knight.

“Do you mean to tell me that that was all a dream?” I’m going crazy from the need to understand.

Just massages her temples. “Click, you were knocked out by a bear. We were playing in the woods, pretending we were in the Hunger Games.”

My vision starts to fade. Clouds of black are obscuring everywhere I look, and the faces of the people I thought I knew are disappearing. I stumble and fall on my knees, reaching out to no one. Where’s Schism? I thought… I thought… My fingers fumble numbly, but I can’t find the loyal crossbow I once had at my side. Before I know it, I’m blacking out.

My last thought before fading back into a black stupor is What?

☐☐☐☐☐

I wake up once again in a cold, hard, stone niche. Suddenly my memories come flooding back in from the night before, and I almost faint again with relief. My dream about a dream was a dream. That sounds weird. Oh, well.

I get up and edge out of my niche, stretching as I go. There’s no one in sight, and the only memory that doesn’t surface is how I got here, but I’m not really thinking about that as I roast some meat that’s sitting on a nearby fire. I don’t know how either of those got here either, but I don’t care: I’m famished. As soon as I take a bite, though, it occurs to me that I should be looking for something. So I pack up and move.

I travel for days, and although there’s plenty of resources in the wildlife to use, I can’t help but feel like something’s missing. I can’t for the life of me tell what it is, though.

Finally I return to the canyon’s cave system I woke up in, hoping to find whatever I’m looking for there. No such luck, though. As I peer down and around the deep trenches carved into the rock, I have to stifle a gasp of horror. I’m not sure why, though. There’s a splatter of blood in a pool on the ground far below me, indicating a struggle and a death, but there’s no one there. In fact, the whole world is completely, eerily devoid of life. I listen as hard as I can into the silenced canyon, but all I hear is the whistle of the quietly echoing wind through the walls. And even as it softly drifts downward, it’s vanishing into the depths of the rocky labyrinth below.

I realize that I’m completely and utterly alone.

As soon as I come to entertain this notion, I see and feel the black crowding in around the edges of my sight, taking over my body, pulling me to lie down on the sun-baked stone. The last thing I notice as I fall into dreamland is that the black is not quite black; it has an infinitesimal tint of purple and green embedded in it, and this reminds me of something. Something involving falling, and fear, maybe? But before I can fathom what this memory might be, I’m pulled under.

☐☐☐☐☐

This time, I return to consciousness in the sky. I’m hundreds of miles above the tallest mountain in the world, and the only thing I’m standing on is a cobweb. As soon as my senses are working, I struggle frantically to get out of it, but I can’t. I’m sinking. I search my inventory desperately, for something, anything to save me.

It’s completely, heartlessly bare.

I can only watch as I sink ever so slowly through the web and plummet to my death below. There’s no water I can land in, no horses I can land on. Nothing.

The ground is rushing, rushing, rushing up towards me, and the wind is roaring my ears so that I feel as if there’s a wall of sound destroying me, and the panic I feel is like my head’s been chopped off, and all the while I’m falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling -

☐☐☐☐☐

I aim my hands towards the glowing purple cube, but my bow’s not there anymore. Perplexed, I sift through my inventory for a spare bow, but there isn’t one. I shrug and reach for my sword, only it’s not in its sheath, either. Suddenly I register that my whole body’s light with the absence of items. Not even my gear stayed on.

A big, ugly, great black head is hurtling towards me at an alarming speed. The Ender Dragon opens its mouth and fires a huge ball of magic at me; I’m engulfed in the warm, sticky, painful cloud. I can feel my stamina draining away, and as the Dragon advances on me, I trip and scuttle backwards, toward the edge of the island.

It knocks me over the edge, and there’s nothing below me but an empty, black void. When I look up again, I wish I hadn’t, because now I’ve lost which way I’m facing. I’m just in a swirling, quiet oblivion.

Forever.

☐☐☐☐☐

I have a faint tingling sensation all over my body. But I can’t dwell on that now, since I’m currently in what seems to be the biggest body of water ever. I’ve been swimming for days now - weeks? Months, even? I can’t tell. Time has no meaning. I’m not even sure if I’m moving anymore; everything looks the same, and the scorching sun is beating ceaselessly down on me, never giving way to my friend the moon.

I’m not sure how I’m still swimming. Maybe I’m not; maybe my body is being pulled along by the currents. Or maybe I’m not even real. Time has no meaning. Possibly no one has even noticed I’m gone.

Gone from where? The sudden, different thought nearly jolts me out of my stupor, but nothing can free me.

And all the while I’m pumping my arms, kicking my legs, gasping for air, feeling the uncontrollable impulse to just keep swimming.

Just keep swimming.

The phrase echoes in my head, softly at first.

Where have I heard that before?

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming, swimming, swimming!

Sitting in a comfortable black chair….

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming, swimming, swimming!

Scrolling through a mass of text on a hotly lit screen….

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming, swimming, swimming!

Something zooming up a strangely false-looking, blocky waterfall… an equally blocky green and white blob… what is that?

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming, swimming, swimming!

The noise is overlapping upon itself, a chorus of haunting voices, booming around my head in what is by now a deafening reminder. There’s a ringing in my ears that I can’t block out, and yet I’m still pushing onward, even though I don’t want to (I think), to… to… pointlessness where am I even no reason going?

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming, swimming, swimming!

But when I finally think I see the faintest glimmer of light, of memory, that pokes through the invisible voices dancing in my brain, I never get a chance to explore it. I suddenly and harshly feel intense gravity kicking in, as if water no longer makes a human float, and it pulls me half under the waves.

And not only that, but the voice in my head is almost starting to feel familiar. I’m sure it’s not my own, though.

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming, swimming, swimming!

The sound’s getting louder, and louder, and louder, and louder, and louder. It’s building up, and up, and up, like a musical beat dr -

A what?

But then the voices suck into harsh silence, all of a sudden, like the panic-laden stillness before an explosion. Surprised by the lack of noise, I thrash around in my heavy, watery quicksand, moving from my trance for the first time in forever (which may very well not be an exaggeration). It only drags me down further into the sea, though, and water fills my ears, completely muting the world. It’s quite calm for a second, actually, but I know it’s the type of calm that comes before the storm.

Suddenly, the water explodes around me and the chant comes back, only this time it does morph into my voice, morphs into my own bubbly scream.

The water envelops me in all its magnificent, terrifying beauty.

I’m not swimming, I’m not swimming, I’m drowning, drowning, drowning, drowning, drowning!

☐☐☐☐☐

There’s a Stray chasing me under this icy sky.

Or at least, that’s what I think it is.

It’s got a skeletal frame, a bow, and a tattered hood, but it’s not quite the right shade of blue. The closest thing to what it is is a Stray.

He’s chasing me, and I’m darting away from him, quick as a fox. But ice spikes keep popping in my way; they’re everywhere, from pure white to a strong, opaque shade of blue that positively radiates cold and disappointment. Why do I feel this so strongly? It’s almost as if the spikes are alive.

I can see my breath, which is coming in short, panicked puffs and somehow I know it’s morning. An icicle-ridden, frost-kissed, life-killing, chilled morning.

Then a ring of spikes comes up, forming a half-circle in front of me. The Stray’s behind me, backing me into the wall, and I’m just wondering whether I can leap around or over it when I see it’s brought buddies. A positive army is advancing on my heart, which is loaded with horror. The closely packed ice spikes form a wall and there’s nowhere to go.

The spikes are jutting out of a lake that’s long since frozen over, and the lake’s covered in snow. I can only see that it’s frozen over from my own footprints, which have smashed through the snow. I start to get an idea.

Skeletons, Strays, and other undead monsters don’t think like we do. That much I know. I’m hoping they aren’t intelligent enough to see what I’m doing and where it will lead.

I kneel down, dig a hole in the snow, and start punching the ice below me. But it’s good, hard, thick ice, and I can’t make a dent. Even as the tears start to form, they freeze and drop to the snow-packed floor like tiny, soundless crystals.

A Stray pins me to the freezing, sky-blue wall by the neck, and another lodges an arrow in his bow and shoots at me. There’s nothing I can do, and my only hope is to wait for the hero that will save me just as it seems all is lost.

But no one comes, and I can only watch in slight surprise as the arrow hits home and leaves a gaping hole in my chest.

The last thing I see before I pass out is that my blood is a neon blue so startling it hurts my eyes.

☐☐☐☐☐

There’s a beast thundering through the once-silent winter wonderland that was my refuge.

I don’t know what it is, and it’s impossible to describe; one moment it seems like a monstrous combination of deadly insects, another a mammoth-like eagle. I cannot say. All I know is that I’m running for my life.

I stumble over a rock that was disguised in the ocean of white and trip into the ground. I expect for my face to be run harshly into the ground, but instead my entire body just sinks through and keeps going. I’m so startled that I almost don’t register the snow pouring in around me, blocking out the sunlight, filling in the hole that I’ve printed into the earth.

I try to scream, but the blanket of white that’s covered the planet drinks in my voice and gives me nothing in return.

Panic rises in me. I can’t die like this, freezing into a solid block of terror and ice, deep beneath the snow, unheard and unseen by anyone who might care. In fact, I’m not convinced that I’m not the only human left. This seems to be a post-apocalypse world; there isn’t a sign of life anywhere on the horizon.

And all the while, the snow is piling on top of me, pushing me down, cutting off my air, chipping away my resolve, bit by bit by bit. It’s coming in slower now, but still falling like a gentle, lethal waterfall.

By the time it’s done, everything’s dark and icy. I’m slowly dying of hypothermia and there’s nothing I can do. The snow’s cuffed my limbs down, weighing heavily on my crushed, feeble body. And even if I was free, I’d be too frozen to move.

And all the while, the blinking, sparkling, shining glory above me sits in a quiet, unearthly beauty. And snowflakes continue to fall softly from the chilled air in a flurry like God’s feathers.

Author’s notes -

1) I have a very comfortable, spinning black chair that I am sitting in right now to write this.

References:

- Tracker jacker/Wither.

- “completely, heartlessly bare” - during the scene where Katniss met Peeta for the first time.

Members:

Click here for cookies (Click, Cookie)

Maki is magic (Maki)

JustHereForNothing (Just)

Yeetmoi (Yeet)

Blursedimages (Blursed, Ghostimages)

StarShadow2 (Star)

Yacmef (Yac)

ThEtBe (ThEtBe)

LemonStickersXOXO (Parker)

Winged Lizzarrd (Lizzarrd)

DONTFEEDMYBEESCOCAINE (Tele)

NONAMEMANBRO (Peter)

Orchifly (Orch, Orchid, Ghostifly)

DreamsWorstKnightMare (Knight)

SimpWasFoundUwU, I didn’t include you because you joined when we were extremely deep into the roleplay.

Graynotfound, I didn’t include you for the same reason.