adstringendummod | The Curtained Sleep

Note: Like with the Animus Gates, participation in the Final Dream is not necessary. It is technically possible for your character to have stayed back instead of trying to fight Saeclumda Cinis, and waited for others to defeat it to end the event.

THE FINAL DREAM

After wandering around so much, it’s frustrating to find yourself back in Teleos’ Dreamscape, but at least you’re with others from the city. Only this time, you can’t see Adstringendum from the windows. The view from them is empty space, as if you were standing at the edge of the universe, looking out at nothingness.

Absolute nonexistence. Can your mind handle it?

You don’t have time to worry about the fate of the city though, not when all the ground up glass around you is suddenly whirling in the air, glittering and somehow dangerous. Faster and faster they spin, shimmering sand cutting into your skin, slowly growing duller and duller until it is no longer glass that’s surrounding you...

...but rather stifling ash.

And you can’t help but breathe it in, no matter how you try to protect your nose and mouth. It’s like Pompeii, only without the fire and heat, and you’re suffocating, feeling your throat clogging up as you desperately try to draw in air even while knowing you’ll only take in more of that ash. Over the pounding of blood in your ears, you can hear bodies hitting the floor before you too join them in blissful unconsciousness and sink down into the darkness.

Deeper and deeper you fall...

Down a bottomless pit.

Lower and lower you tumble...

Towards an unfathomable emptiness.

Then you jerk awake, drenched in cold sweat, gasping for breath. It all just seems to be a bad dream, yet though your eyes are open, you still haven’t truly woken up. There’s still one more Dreamscape to get through—that of Saeclumda Cinis.

And not everyone is with you.

Welcome to the Final Dream.
FIRST NIGHTMARE

It’s that moment just before dawn, the sky has its first hints of light, but it never gets brighter. Or perhaps a day has come and gone each time you blink, who really knows? You seem to have woken up on the side of Mount Aporiatio that overlooks the city. The silhouette of the buildings can be seen in the dim light, and those might be vines you see when you squint. Of course, trying to get closer to the city leads nowhere—run as you might, when you stop and look back, it’s as if you haven’t taken a single step, despite how you may have exhausted yourself.

Look at how your legs are shaking.

Or maybe that’s the trembling of the volcano itself. The tremors get stronger and stronger as pressure builds up inside the volcano before lava finally erupts from the top in a torrent of noise and debris. Ash is spat into the air, coalescing into a shadowy figure that’s soon obscured by the rolling smoke. If you look closely, the ash seems to be constantly changing forms, always shifting so quickly between each that you can never quite tell what it is, but one thing is clear: that’s who this Dreamscape belongs to, which means that the only way out of here is to kill it.

First though, you’ll have to make your way up to it. Watch out for the lava and mud flow heading your way. And step carefully, who knows how many more eruptions are left?

And how do you kill something made of ash?
SECOND NIGHTMARE
Of Use: Ekpyrosis' Mark

Stars are the first things that greet you upon opening your eyes. They glitter and shift in patterns you can’t identify, and it feels like you’re standing in space, or falling in a vacuum—hard to tell which. The whole universe is moving, and you’re in the middle of it all. Look up, there’s a giant clock face above you. Circles lie inside circles, digits, symbols and unfamiliar characters inscribed on their edges, pointed to by intricately worked serpentine hands. Exactly what time they’re indicating, however, is a mystery. It could be the hour and minute, a period in history or even the end of eternity.

Tick. Tock.

Tick...

Tock...

Yet despite the ticking filling your ears, the many hands on the dial aren’t moving, and it’s only when you notice that that you look down and see the enormous hourglass under your feet. Made out of what appears to be impossibly hard ash, it’s empty at first, but as you watch, a star falls to the bottom, like a grain of sand.

And suddenly, you feel older.

Time is sped up in this world, and if you don’t want to die from premature old age, the only thing to do is to destroy the hourglass and clock. The only problem is that both timepieces seem rather impervious to physical damage—only magic, enchanted items or the spiritual can harm it. Of course, you get a little older each time you use your powers, so perhaps it would be best to try to have the children help you channel them. After all, younger minds are always more open to the idea of the mystical, and in this crush of generations and eras, perhaps even those normally incapable of wielding magic are able to do so now. That goes for time itself—any ability used against it is learned, stored away in the folds of years and centuries to be used against others later on.

Work fast. The more damaged this part of the Animus gets, the faster you age.

Who will be the first to die?
THIRD NIGHTMARE

The cold wind howls and stings your cheeks at the top of the wall surrounding the city. Rain pelts down unceasingly, matting hair to scalp as you do your best to avoid tripping over the vines and roots that have taken over the wall and started to pull it down.

It’s good that the sky is weeping.

The downpour can hide your tears and cleanse your hands of the blood of your former allies, even if it won’t wash away the aching hole inside. What else can you do when you realize half your allies have been taken over by Saeclumda Cinis? They’re a danger to themselves and the rest of you. There’s no other way than to subdue them quickly and relatively painlessly, because no matter how much you want to deny it, you know that they are all already lost, that there’s no saving them from that condition, and that they would never want to continue living this way.

Better to kill them all and move on.

But can you live with the guilt?
FOURTH NIGHTMARE
Of Use: Thalatte's Clues

Finally back in the city proper. At least, that’s what it looks like at first glance. Until you realize that there are buildings and walls built on once open streets. The usual roads you take are now blocked off, turning left might as well meant turning right, and nothing is where it’s supposed to be. In fact, it feels as if the entire place has been turned into a gigantic, winding maze.

You’re not wrong.

But let’s be a little more specific... You’ve found yourself in the minotaur’s labyrinth. Or at least you think it might be a minotaur— whatever’s chasing you guys is large, powerful, ever mutating and no matter what you try, unable to be slain.

How many allies had to die before you figured that out?

All that’s left for you to do now is run, but don’t take too many wrong turns. The city is crumbling as time passes. Paths that were once there may have disappeared by the time you double back to find it, leaving absolutely nothing behind. It’s like a planet decaying the moment it was born, with no way to save it, or anything on it. Your only hope is to find the escape and let the disintegrating world take the monster with it. Along with all the suddenly ferocious beasts usually found within the city. Don’t let them slow you down, and above all...

Don’t fall behind.
FIFTH NIGHTMARE
Of Use: Thalatte's Blessing ~~maybe~~

Wet, cold and dark, you’ve found yourself in the lake, underwater, the surface of it completely frozen over. You can’t breathe, the pressure is crushing you, but it doesn’t, and you’re not drowning, even if it feels like you are.

A paradox.

Make sense of it before your sanity is torn asunder.

Also, you’re upside-down. In fact, every movement you make ends up occurring in reverse. Left is right, up is down and back is front; everything is all jumbled and moving in the opposite direction. A little problematic when you find yourself having to fight Squid-tan. Or at least, Saeclumda Cinis’ Squid-tan, which happens to be composed of various gears, scrap metal and clock parts. It also squirts ash instead of ink, and unfortunately, isn’t affected by the contradiction of this world.

Or perhaps it’s already used to the confusion.

Either way, it makes things difficult as this part of Saeclumda is immune to magic—trying to use anything spiritual against it would be complete destruction. Only physical attacks with the basest of instruments will work. Any sort of unnatural enhancement or enchantment will only serve to make it even more powerful. Tear it apart with your hands or hit it with your fists if you must.

Punch out that Animus.
FINAL BATTLE
Of Use: Esoteria's Gift & Aelia's Lance

The final dream is set in a world where the city has been completely reclaimed by the Wastes, time and its mutations have destroyed the stability of Adstringendum, and all that’s left are you, the survivors. You have solved, fought and killed your way to the exit, carrying both the hopes and the despairs of those who have been lost. All that stands in your way now is one Animus, a multitude of gods—

Saeclumdas Cinis.

There he (or is it they?) stands, a cloaked and hooded figure buried so deep inside a monk’s cowl that nothing of his actual features can be seen. His hands are tucked in the broad sleeves, and even his feet are covered by the length of his frock. The outline is fuzzy, as if this form of them constantly wants to shift into something else, just barely held together through the sheer magnitude of their wrath. A raven sits on the monk’s shoulder, the tarnished metal of its body shining black in the dim light, two gleaming stars its eyes. Around them, various animals prowl, antique messes of springs, scrap metal, gears and broken glass all twisted together—physical manifestations of time in living, breathing frames.

Has been’s, worked into new forms.

Occasionally, smaller creatures break off the stalking cats, flitting through the air on delicate wire wings as dragonflies, settling on the tail feathers of the strutting peacocks before those too fracture off into fish that swim without water, shedding metallic scales that grow into orchids. Ash trails after them, coiling around the lumbering bodies, getting into the whirring gears of their joints, holding them all together. It’s especially thick around the monk and the raven.

There’s a raucous caw.

A single nod beneath the hood.

And pandemonium breaks out, the animals launching forward with unearthly, timeless shrieks and growls, pounding across the constantly transforming wastelands towards the more powerful of the group. Time is continuously shifting in Saeclumdas’ presence, but you have no time to admire the quick change of the seasons or the growth of entire forests. This is a war where even your own spells from eons past can be used against you.

Fight for your freedom.
NAVIGATION

Event Overview || The Animus Gates || Final Dream Plotting || Character Dreamscape Plotting 1 || Character Dreamscape Plotting 2
THE LOGISTICS

1. The final dream with Saeclumda Cinis can be viewed as a tiered boss fight where characters first fight against smaller, weaker parts of the Animus before finally taking on the entire entity.

at least

including

2. The event officially ends when Saeclumda Cinis falls. ICly, this will happen after two weeks have elapsed in the waking world, but your character may not realize that it has already/only been two weeks.

FAQ

Does killing a manifestation of Saeclumda Cinis/getting through a nightmare mean my character wakes up?
Nope! It just means that they have cleared that nightmare and can ICly move onto the next one.

Does my character have to participate in every nightmare and the Final Battle?
No. Your character can decide that one nightmare was enough and that they have absolutely no desire to continue forward, thank you very much! Or, you know, they could have died.

So exactly what happens when Saeclumda is defeated?
Time goes back under control, and everyone wakes up. The mutated "citizens" in the city disappear, and the Wastes will slowly be pushed back outside the wall as the Safezone stabilizes over the next week. There might even be some lingering effects, but... you'll have to wait until the of the event to find out ^ー^ ~~Because the mods are still thinking those up, shhh!~~

The Curtained Sleep - The Final Dream

Third Nightmare Plotting