RP:Some Doors Are Meant To Stay Closed

Inspired by Kanna/Karasu's awesome writing prompt contest!: "You wake up to find a large door in your room where there surely was not one before. Should you go through the door, you must find your own way back."

Summary: A magical door opens in the Herzegler apartment and both Khitti and Brand find themselves walking through it, thinking that they're both dreaming. They soon realize that it is not a dream... and it looks like things are going to all seven hells in a handbasket again.

The Apartment Above The Bakery, Cenril

Khitti || Oh boy, 3am! Well, that’s probably what most people would think. Khitti, on the other hand, had a terrible track record of having nightmares and other bad things happen at that particular time in the morning, most of them having to do with things in the Shadow Plane. Sometimes it had to do with the ghosts of her family. And sometimes, it just had to do with that terrible anxiety of hers. Surprisingly, none of those were the case this time. She tossed and turned on her side of the bed, in the apartment above the bakery, the feeling of something incredibly off keeping her on edge as she slept.

Khitti || An ominous golden glow came from across the room, the faint light shining across Khitti’s face, finishing the job of waking her up. Or so she thought. The door to the bedroom was what was glowing and it was very much not supposed to be glowing. Surely she was still dreaming. A dream within a dream, perhaps? With brows furrowed, she slid out of bed and wandered toward it. This was… probably not a good idea. But, it was a dream! It was fine. Totally fine. Nothing bad ever happened in her dreams… right? Okay… Ignore that dream where she was a lich and everyone she loved was dead and the entire continent of Lithrydel was on fire, covered in massive Shadow Plane spiders, or both. It’s fine. Fiiiiiine. Khitti opened the door and sand, like that of an hourglass, began to fall from the top of the doorframe, ticking away as she made her decision to stay or throw herself headlong into what was likely danger again.

Khitti || For a moment, she looked over her shoulder at the bed, then sighed, knowing she wouldn’t be able to just ignore this… and headed on into the weird unknown that awaited her on the other side.

Brand was having an amazing sleep when some kind of golden glowy light rudely interrupted him. He opened his eyes and glared at the glowy rectangle that had awakened him. The frak was this?

Brand || He crawled out of bed, groaning with overdramatic old-man stiffness, and approached the glowy light. It was the bedroom door. Grumbling to himself all the while, he shut it and flopped back onto the bed.

Brand || The light pierced his eyeballs again, even through his closed lids. He squinted one eye just barely open and glowered at the glowy door once again. He’d just shut it. So why was it still open and searing his eyeballs with bright yellow-white?

Brand || He shut the door once more and flopped face down onto the bed… but it didn’t help. The second he was back on the bed, the door was open again and the light was so strong that there was no hiding his eyes from it. Must be a dream, then. It was the only thing that made sense. Go figure life would find a way to annoy him even in his dreams.

Brand || Ugh, fiiiine. He’d humor his stupid dream brain and go through the door, since that was clearly what the dream wanted him to do. He’d better feel well-rested and content when he woke up. It wouldn’t do to start his day already annoyed.

Brand || The closer he got to the door this time, the brighter the light got. Grumbling one more time, he clenched his eyes closed and stepped through.

Khitti hadn’t gotten too far through the doorway and she was only stirred out of her thoughts as Brand sleepily bumped into her. She jumped and spun around, about ready to karate chop his face off until she realized it was him. “Uhh… Wait. Why are you here?” He only had mere seconds to answer before she circled around behind him and pushed him forward to get a better look at the “place” they’d stepped into.

Khitti || The sands that had fallen from the doorframe filled the area for as far as the eye could see--literally miles. Nestled amongst the perfectly golden sand were hundreds--no, thousands… millions?--of doors. Some glowed like the one behind them, though in various other colors. One in particular had blood oozing through the cracks of the door, while another had shadows so thick you could cut it like a cake billowing out from beneath the door itself, and yet another still was literally on fire, its smoke trailing up into the air above. And there were others, several in fact, that were boarded up entirely, and if someone tried to pry the boards off, they’d be unsuccessful.

Khitti || “Why do I always have the weird dreams? Can’t someone else have them for once?” Khitti scrunched up her nose a little. “And why do I have such a bad feeling about a bunch of doors…” Well, there was nothing for it but to press on and maybe make the bad choice of opening on of the doors. So, she did. Of course she was intrigued by the strange-looking doors and went to the one oozing blood. Khitti hesitated, then finally opened it and peered inside, and was met with a cacophony of screams and wails. It was clear that wherever the door lead to was some sort of torture chamber, as victims lined the walls and more still were strapped to tables, all of them going through some stage of bloodletting.

Khitti just stared, taking in as much as she could of the room, only for her attention to fall on the back of redhead, who was far too engulfed in their vicious feeding from one of the wailing victims to take notice of her for now. Something felt familiar, and yet not. Her stomach twisted into uncertain knots as she took a step back away from the doorway.

Brand rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. “What do you mean, ‘why am I here’?” It was a strange thing for dream-Khitti to ask, but then he supposed strange things in his dreams were so common as to be almost normal. Shrugging, he parted ways with Khitti and walked to another one of the doors. It glowed purple.

Brand || He poked his head in and immediately had to duck to dodge a purple fireball careening his way. A very angry redheaded man was shooting purple fireballs and globs of acid every which way, while a disturbingly familiar butterfly looked on. He didn’t seem to be aiming -at- anything in particular, just recklessly destroying everything in his surroundings. Brand retreated from the doorway before the man could see him and decide to make him target practice.

Brand || “Weird,” Brand muttered to himself. “That guy kinda looked like me.”

Khitti || “Khatja, are you -still- eating?” The voice came from elsewhere in the room that Khitti had peered into, sounding unmistakably like Brand’s. “It’s not my fault you found one that tastes so good,” said the redhead, pulling her face from the victim's neck, and batting her eyes towards where the voice had come from. Blood had poured down the barely breathing human's front, the rest of it on “Khatja” herself. Suddenly the strange amount of bloodletting made sense. Suddenly, Khitti wasn’t so happy with her choice of doors. And just as a very vampiric Brand came into view to pull Khatja into his arms, Khitti slammed the door shut and tried very hard not to start hyperventilating.

Khitti || “What the actual hell was that?!” That door stirred up too many memories. Shouldn’t she have woken up by now? She usually did when things started getting -really- weird. “Okay, I really need to wake up.” Khitti went to another door, this one smelling like the salty sea air and glowing blue. Within this one, Khitti was met with the underneath of a vast ocean. Beyond she could see a large city looming in the darkness of the depths and not too far off, a redheaded mermaid was being chased by another sort of mer-like creature, though this one was massive and had tentacles in place of a tailfin. The longer she watched, the longer she realized… This was another Khitti. And the octopus lady? It was Amarrah. Khitti slammed this door shut too and all but charged over to Brand. “What the hell is this? Why can’t I wake up? Is someone else screwing with my head like Facilier?” Taking him by the shoulders, she shook him a bit, looking rather desperate. “I am -not- getting stuck in a dream again!” Why would dream-Brand know anything about what was going on? Khitti wasn’t sure, but she at least had someone to shout at while she panicked.

Brand || “Hey, hey, easy on the shoulders. Think I dislocated one earlier playing ball with Dominic.” It didn’t matter what Brand said. He was shaken, not stirred. Like a certain alcoholic drink. He was just thinking how much he could use one of those when Khitti finally stopped shaking him long enough for him to (mostly) unscramble his brain cells and realize… “This isn’t a dream, is it?” Khitti was probably coming to the same realization herself about now. Fun.

Khitti || “W-what? No. This… has to be a dream. This is -too- weird. This is weirder than literally anything else we’ve dealt with.” Khitti was all furrowed brows and a look of panicked uncertainty again. It was so weird, in fact, that Khitti actually looked kind of spooked. Hardly -anything- scared Khitti. Her attention slid away from Brand and over to that door that was on fire. Her stomach was knots upon knots upon knots now as she moved over in front of it, a hand reaching out to grab the doorknob. The flames shifted from their normal fiery color to that of Khitti’s shadowflames as she opened the door. On the other side was the inside of a mausoleum, the side of the room opposite Khitti lined with stone coffins. Some of the sigils etched into them were different, but ultimately, she knew what she was looking at. And then came the wailing. The sound was sorrowful and agonizing to hear, and it tugged and ripped at Khitti’s heartstrings despite the fact that she’d heard it all before. “What… is going on?”

Brand just shrugged in response to Khitti’s words. “Your guess is as good as mine, peach.” He was trying to be the calm one, since it clearly wasn’t going to be Khitti. What would a calm Brand do? A calm Brand would… try to close and lock all the doors. Yes. He’d run back to the door they’d come from (better remember which one that was so they could get back!) and grab the key for that door, then run around locking as many doors as possible. Some of them wouldn’t shut. Some of them would shut but wouldn’t lock. But … as many as he could, he’d seal away. He had a feeling all these doors were going to lead to something -very bad-, and so he was gonna try to limit that inevitable awfulness as much as possible.

Khitti just watched as Brand closed the door in front of her, as well as others, and did his best to lock them if he was able to. “I… think I need a drink. Probably several bottles. You too.” When he seemed more or less done, she led him back to the golden door they came through, letting him shut and lock that too. The instant Brand would turn the key, the golden glow would fade away. And if he turned it back to unlock it? It wouldn’t return and the other side of the door would just be their apartment. “Oh good. We’re not stuck in our bedroom for the next foreseeable eternity,” she said, heading into the kitchen. The panic had left her for now and she just sort of sounded numb. “How bad do you think this is going to be? I saw us as vampires, lich-me, and mermaid-me getting chased and possibly eventually eaten by an Amarrah that was half octopus. Do you… think there’s something worse than that in there?”

Brand entered the kitchen behind Khitti and quickly fixed them both a drink. Did it matter that it was shortly after three in the morning? Nah. He chugged that shiz anyway, and then fixed himself another. “Probably,” he said, completely nonchalantly. Just another crazy night in the nonstop madness that was his life. He was used to it. This was fine. It was fine! It was -totally- fine. Whoops, had he finished the second drink already? Time for a third. “I saw me merged with Amarrah like you used to be, me as a vampire, me as a seahorse…” Shudder. That last one was the scariest of them all.

Khitti was reminded of the time she’d told Brand about male seahorses giving birth--he didn’t like that, of course--and smirked somewhat at the thought of Brand as one of them. “I will say though, vampire-you is pretty hot,” she said with a nod before chugging her own drink and giving him the glass to make her another. “Lots of black and leather. Looked like they had a huge torture chamber though, so that’s not quite what I’d imagined happening if time had passed and I turned you, instead of me getting that cure.” She was probably thinking about this too much. It wasn’t the first time she’d fantasized about a vampire Brand, after all. “So. Time for an all night drunken bender before the bad stuff happens? Seems like we actually get the choice this time. Or should we pretend we’re responsible adults for once?”

Brand side-eyed in the direction of the kids’ bedrooms. “Uhhhh, my head says we should be responsible adults. But my gut says ‘more alcohol, please’, and I’m already two and a half drinks in, so…” Brand had chosen, and he’d chosen the all-night drunken bender. Sorry, kids. Hope you don’t wake up in the middle of the night needing anything, because your parents are probably about to be -very- incapable of actually doing anything helpful.

Khitti smirked at Brand again, pouring him another drink, as well as one for herself. “Okay, so we won’t get too drunk. Just a little, as a treat.” She handed him his glass and the bottle, grabbed his arm, and led him back into their bedroom. “Khitt and Annette can take over tomorrow, anyway, and I’m sure things’ll be fine.” She meant with the kids, obviously, and not whatever oncoming storm was headed their way. Khitti pushed the door shut mostly, hoping that that weird portal to Super Awful Door Land wouldn’t open up again. “And hopefully, maybe, somehow, this’ll all just be an extremely weird bad dream that we both somehow managed to have. It’s not like it’d be the first time.” She was opting for the faux optimism now because what else was she going to do? Besides drink and probably makeout with her husband anyway.