World Tree MUSH

    This place seems to be made of shades of darkness, illuminated by fat red stars hanging in the midnight blue sky. Against the sky, defined only by the void they outline, are immense peaks upon which dance clouds of whiter-than-white motes of light. Those living things that enter this dream kingdom of death are lit from within by the same whiter-than-white light, the mortal shells containing it only barely visible as outlines.
    Aurelia looks at her hands, illuminated by the strange soul light. "We're seeing soulfire, but... how?"
    Ahead, lit only by the cast-off light of the living beings who entered from the living lands, are barely recognizable shapes of ruins from hundreds of cultures that have existed on Earth across time. The hollow men don't retain their melted flesh here, plodding along the road of broken flagstones and cobble as the mere outline or suggestion of human shape, speaking aloud their regret and despair. This sussurus of voices fills the air, lending an eerie whisper to the already surreal surroundings.

    Tirsiak is taking the lead. In fact, she's not expecting anyone to follow. When she notices people are following, she gives a slight growl. "Do not stand behind me," she insists.

    She looks... exactly the same as she does on the surface, once again making it clear she's not a normal person even slightly. She's carrying her makeshift spear made from a rock and a whittled tree branch, and is wearing a determined expression.

    It's put on intentionally. She feels very on edge right now.

    Serrah feels mildly awkward about her last comment, but when she arrives, she blinks in surprise at the sudden change. "Huh ... can't say I was expecting this," she murmurs, looking herself over. Her light is slightly tinted, but no less bright.

    Her head jerks towards Aurelia. "Okay, I really wasn't expecting that."

    She frowns at Tirsiak. "Hey, uh, we're just going in the same direction as you," she says awkwardly, raising her hands in what she hopes is a placating gesture.

"Wow, is this an afterlife?" Holly looks up at the red stars curiously and hearing Tirsiak she sidesteps a bit as so she's not directly behind her. Servis and Lavaux look exactly the same as they do above. She notices her hands glowing as well but they seem to be faded. "Yes, it would be best if we stuck together down here! This place is rather strange." And that's coming from her of all people. She doesn't sound scared or anything more curious if anything.

    Aurelia shrugs. "I guess it's /an/ afterlife?. Or a place for ghosts, since a lot of people get stuck and can't go to whatever's after life. Orania says that ghosts are souls that haven't crossed the River Lethe." She summons her sword out of an abundance of caution. The adamant crystal blade glows with gentle sunlight, giving back color and solidity to objects its light touches.
    "I guess we follow the zombies then?" Aurelia says, cautiously following off to one side of Tirsiak, avoiding contact with the hollowed souls that keep filing in from the gateway.

    "If a shade can escape an afterlife, its keeper is either incompetent, missing or dead," Tirsiak says. "Hope for the latter. The latter is easiest to deal with."

    She's not glancing around in obvious curiosity, although she IS very curious. She just... doesn't really want to look like she is. Not with mortals around. She has a job to do - mostly because she's the only god present and her sphere sort of fits so it sort of defaults to her responsibility.

    "The shades probably know the way." Probably.

    Serrah nods, scooting over to Holly and her ghosts, and ... slightly flinches at the light of Aurelia's sword, but does her best not to try to avoid it. "Sunlight, man," she mutters, and then lets out a big yawn. "... freaking ..."

    She nods to Tirsiak. "Right," she murmurs, scooting sideways as she goes so that she's more-or-less on the opposite side of Holly from Tirsiak.

"Or it has unfinished business..." Holly looks at Servis and Lavaux as she says that. "It's possible that the afterlife can't keep them contained if that's the case. Or something else is preventing them from behing reincarnated. Such as not enough new births. It's also possible that keeper wanted them to escape for whatever reason." She points out there's other options besides what Tirsiak pointed out. The pair of ghosts do their best to stay clear of Aurelia's sword as well.

    "Yeah, unfinished business. Though I don't know what's keeping Orania around after three thousand years." Aurelia waves the sword at the shades, who are doing their best to avoid its light.
    The hollow souls stop here, around a wide amphitheater-like pit with decaying stone seats. They are filing in, sitting in the seats, looking at the central stage, where a hole in the world like a well sits. Improbably there's singing coming from it, in a voice that is not so much heard as felt in the very bones.

    Tirsiak doesn't stop walking as they reach the strange amphitheater, and just heads right down into it. She glances around at the shades taking seats, but she doesn't stop to marvel at the architecture, or the throngs of the dead, or even the singing. Nope, she's heading straight for the well, as it is the most obvious focal point of this place.

    Serrah sighs softly. "Wish I'd paid more attention in class when they covered the afterlife," she mutters. "... Or, wait, this world might just work too differently." She shrugs. "Well, I don't feel any more dead than I did two minutes ago ohgod ..."

    She frowns as she starts to feel that singing. She glances between Holly and Aurelia as Tirsiak just plunges on forward. "... do we just follow her, or ...?"

Holly feels it as well but sings along a bit off-key with the singer as she follows Tirsiak. "Are you sure it's a good idea to sing the song along with her?" Servis can't help but to question her,

 "I can't help, it's kind of catchy. "I wonder if this is some kind of concert hall for the undead?" It would certainly explain why they've gathered her. "I hope I don't get kicked out for still being alive."

 "Damn, it doesn't look like there's any kind of ring down here. I bet you could get quite an audience gathered down here." Lavaux figures it would an easy to way to get some attention.

    At Tirsiak's approach, the singing stops. And what rises out of the well is a great shadow, one that defies logic as it absorbs all light. Even the light from Aurelia's sword doesn't seem to reflect from its amorphous mass It seems to be looking at Tirsiak directly.
    HO THERE! ARE YOU LOST, LITTLE ONE? it seems to say. The hollow souls begin wandering again further down the valley; the singing seems to have been what kept them there, however temporarily.

    Tirsiak looks impassively up at the shadow, then rises up into the air to the full height of her levitation - adding about two feet of 'height'. "I am Tirsiak. I embody the wild and cold, the cycle of life and death, of hunter and prey. Shades have been escaping this place and attacking the living. This perverts the order of things and must stop."

    Her grip on her makeshift spear tightens. She's technically not sure if her authority even extends to this place...

    Serrah furrows her brow at Holly's singing. "I'm ... not ... quite ... sure that's what the deal is, Holly," she says, grimacing. "It seems more like magic singing than for entertainment, I think."

    Okay, looks they've found something, at least. As the shadowy being makes itself known, Serrah strides on over, one hand in her baseball bag -- making sure she doesn't go directly behind Tirsiak in the process -- and heads over to the edge of the amphitheater, not quite entering the vicinity yet, but watching to see the being's response to Tirsiak.

"Oh, so Tirsiak is her name! That's nice to know!" Holly finally knows what to call her new friend. "So you keep a balance between the living and the dead, that's pretty important!" She nods in agreemen with Tirsiak. "Yes, it's understandable if they have unfinished business but it doesn't seem like they have any goals and are just attacking people at random." It sounds like they don't have a reach for sticking around. "It's certainly a problem if someone's keeping them from having a peaceful rest." Then again she rather not hurt the ghosts either.

    The shadow chuckles deeply at Tirsiak's demand. YOU MISTAKE THE GROUNDSKEEPER FOR THE GATEKEEPER!
    Aurelia quietly steps in next to Tirsiak, looking at the void-dark being, then glances at the hollow souls passing through the ampitheater curiously.
    IF, IN THESE WORLDS, YOU WISH THE DEAD TO STOP BOTHERING THE LIVING, THEN YOU SHOULD TEACH THE LIVING TO LIVE BETTER. The shadow chastises. HUMANITY AND THEIR EMBERS OF AMBITION CREATE THEIR OWN MISERY. EVEN IN DEATH.

    Tirsiak keeps up her level stare at this 'groundskeeper'. "If you do not have the authority to keep the gate, then by what authority do you keep the grounds?"

    She frowns. "I cannot teach humanity to act against its nature."

    Well, okay, looks like they are doing the follow-Tirsiak thing. Serrah strides up along with Aurelia.

    She nods along with Holly and Tirsiak, pulling out a baseball and tossing it into the air a few times. "So, yeah, people suck," she says, an edge in her voice, "and again, like Holly said, therefore it's totally cool to randomly attack random people who most likely have nothing to do with whatever you're offended about?"

    And then she yawns again. "... whoops," she murmurs.

"So, you're saying that the living aren't make the most of their lives so they still have regrets when they die?" That's what Holly's getting out of this. It would also explain why these people aren't able to find rest. "But it seems like they're not carrying out their desires now either. I doubt these are the same people they kept them from their goals." It doesn't seem like they're going after certain people.

 "This is starting to go in circles. I don't think they're going to listen to us." Lavaux already knows there's not much Holly can do about it.

    Aurelia glances at Serrah and Holly. "Ghosts can't interact with anything not in the spirit world... normally." She has to add the last word because the hollow men were definitely different. "And we can't see or interact with them... again, *normally*." She takes a breath. Aurelia admittedly doesn't know much beyond what Orania and Dorothy Andrews has told her. "Which means they can't actually do anything to fix whatever's keeping them around."
    JUST SO. The shadow says, with a tinge of smugness as it hears Aurelia explain a little. THIS, YOU SEE, WAS MADE BY THE ATLANTEANS TO DRAW IN RESTLESS SOULS.
    The shadow seems to indicate the hollow souls. THOSE ARE DIFFERENT. ANYTHING NOBLE WAS EATEN.

    "Oh. This is a work of artifice. Of course." Tirsiak grumbles, frowning and pinching the bridge of her nose. "Well. Whatever these Atlantean sorcerers wanted with these restless souls is irrelevant. If this trap was created, it can be destroyed."

    Tirsiak floats back down to the ground and turns away.

    Serrah blinks a few times, peering at the shadow. It takes slightly longer for her to make sense of all this than it would if she'd slept better. And then she facepalms. "Great," she says. "How do we stop the hollow guys specifically?"

    Tirsiak's solution, of course, is direct and to the point. Serrah finds she can't complain about that, at least.

"We can't just leave them stuck here for eternity! Wait, so are we what's left of Atlantis right now? Or is this just some kind of limbo between life and death?" Holly's a bit confused about that. "Speak for yourself, I can normally see ghosts though in fact they seem to gather around me..." She's quite in touch with the spiritual world after all.

    BANISH WHATEVER MADE THEM. The shadow says. EASIER SAID THAN DONE, OF COURSE... It waves at Tirsiak as she leaves, knowing that this place can't be destroyed so easily. One would have to destroy the groundskeeper that serves as the lynchpin for the otherworldly realm. The groundskeeper would never admit this to anyone who wasn't an archmage, but an archmage wouldn't need to ask; they would already know. Nor would it mention the hoard of oboli at the bottom of its well.
    THEY EVENTUALLY FADE AWAY, LEAVING BEHIND THEIR AMBITION... I HAVE NOT SEEN AN ATLANTEAN IN THREE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED OR SO YEARS. The shadow gestures at Aurelia. YOUR BLADE SMELLS OF THEM THOUGH.
    "My sword?" Aurelia asks.
    -THAT- IS -NOT- A SWORD. It says cryptically before withdrawing back into its well.
    Aurelia looks puzzled, furrowing her brow. "Well, guess we'd better follow the hollow men back to their source." She turns to follow Tirsiak, trusting the hunter spirit's senses more than her mere human senses.

    Tirsiak has no idea what she's doing.

    But she looks very confident.

    She explores around a bit, trying to get a good idea of where the Hollow Men are coming from, before following the trail - if she can find it.

    Serrah nods slowly, fighting back another yawn. She's just following Aurelia at this point ... who, in turn, is following Tirsiak, but whatever.

"So, they've died more recently then if they're still around then? Or they're all that's left of those who died long ago?" Holly's not quite sure what one it is and is confused as well. "Well, if we're down here long enough they should start to come towards me right?"

 "They're not from our world, Holly as far as we know they might just consider you another mortal." Servis points out to her.

 "Can you detect where they're coming from, Tirsiak?" The girl's a spirit herself she might have better luck at this.

    Tirsiak still has no idea what she's doing. But she IS a hunter.