The Wretched Rite - Round Three - DSRS Darwin

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

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Though Alice had been momentarily taken aback by the rusalka’s casual revelation, she quickly recovered. “Not fuckin’ likely.” She folded her arms and rolled her arms as if her death was out of the question. Addy almost certainly would have had questions about this if at that moment Taelia had not collapsed to the floor unconscious. “Fuckin’ hell, is she always this faint-hearted?”

“How’m I supposed ta know?” Adelaide responded. Alice walked up to the sleeping girl and with her foot, rolled her onto her back.

“Is this a fuckin’ thing in this town or what?” Alice asked. “Are they putting somethin’ in the water round here?”

“They’d better not be.” Adelaide snarled. She thought for a moment and asked: “There are other sleeping people around here?”

“Well… yeah.” Alice replied sarcastically. “Have you been walkin’ around with your fuckin’ eyes shut or somethin?”

“I’ve had other things to deal with.” Adelaide responded. “Like…” she gestured towards the sleeping Taelia, and intended to gesture towards M and Poran, only she couldn’t see where they had gone. Alice knelt down and took in Taelia’s fate. It was muddied and confused. There were elements that said her fate was to unleash a great evil, that her fate was to die in battle, and that her fate was to sleep forever. It was giving Alice a headache.

“They’re fuckin’ everywhere.” Alice said, straightening up. “Don’t know how you could have missed them.”

Adelaide raised an eyebrow at a thought that occurred to her. She tried to dismiss it labelling it silly, but it wouldn’t be cast away quite so easily. Look at the scenario she was in after all. “This remind you of Sleepin’ Beauty?” she asked, feeling a little silly as she said the words.

“Sleepin’ Moderately Attractive I Guess.” Alice said with a shrug, her attention fixed on Taelia.

“No…” Adelaide said. “It’s a story. This princess pricks her finger or somethin’ and the whole town goes to sleep because of a curse or somethin’.”

“Never heard of it,” Alice shrugged, “must be a human thing.” Maybe this fish-woman whatever she was was wrong, Alice thought. She was pretty sure that she was wrong about being told stuff by some non-descript man, so why would she be right about being supposed to die. If this was some human story then perhaps ending the story would send her back home and this whole ridiculous fiasco would be just a weird thing that happened to her once. “What happens next?”

“I dunno, the prince goes to the castle and wakes the princess with a kiss I guess? That’s how those things usually end.” Addy replied.

“Then that’s what I’m doin’.” Alice said.

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Though the whole town slumbered, only one of its residents, the designated Princess; Red, had a dreamless sleep. Collapsed where they stood, the residents of the town soon found themselves forced into roles they were compelled to act out, and all to please a narrator who was not satisfied with one tale at a time.

The narrator had not been best pleased when these strangers arrived in town. She did not know where they were from or why they had been brought here. To her they were loose ends flapping in the breeze. They had no story to tell, but the potential to ruin the story she was telling now.

So she had let some of them slip into a fairytale dream of their own, so what? What if she was eliminating potential saviours for the sleeping princess? What of it? Though her head told her that all stories must come to an end and that the town must eventually awake, she wished that it did not have to. She loved things just as they were; that the people of this town were actors in the stories she devised. She never wanted them to wake up and things to go back to how they once were.

Hesitantly she let sleep engulf the intruders into this town.