[ The kingdom of Duskvale is bathed in, well - the light of dusk. It feels like a beautiful, bustling city, but it doesn't take longer than a moment to notice that there's something incredibly stifling and wrong and suffocating about the place, and especially so in the version of it that exists within this nightmare of Oriphi's. Though there are people on the streets, every human and elf and half-elf alike carries themselves as though they carry the weight of a thousand men on their shoulders, the burden of silence and isolation. Where there are conversations, words are chosen carefully and warily and voices are low, hushed, secretive.

And the middle of it all is a small tiefling woman. Ori trails behind her friends, almost like she's being slowed down by all the staring and whispering that they garner as they pass through. "What are those people doing here?" "Don't they know what it's like, here?" "The Divine Ruler will deal with them soon enough."

Ori has heard all of this before. She remembers it all clearly, because it feels like it happened yesterday - except, did it? Why does it feel like yesterday and two months ago all at once?

A small child runs up to her, then, tugging on her clothes in question. When Ori stops and glances down at the child, they say:

"Why couldn't you stop her, Oriphi?"]

Wh... How do you know my name?

[ "How could you let this happen? Why couldn't you stop her?" ]

Please, I-I don't... understand...

[ In the span of what feels like a mere minute, the kingdom of Duskvale is engulfed in searing, purple flames and in the sky - finally freed from its frozen dusk and gone well into the dark of night - soars a dragon. The crushing atmosphere turns into one of desperation, the weighted gait of the townsfolk turns into running for survival, and the hushed whispers of the townsfolk and passersby have turned into screaming and cries for help.

And there Ori is, still in the middle of it all, and when she turns back around she finds herself facing her friends in various states of injury and unconsciousness. Kneeling and leaning against the weight of his sword, utterly spent, is a half-orc, her ever-brave paladin of a friend, and next to him lays an elven monk, an open gash across his chest as the paladin lays a hand upon the other man in a vain attempt to heal his wounds. Elsewhere is an elven woman with braided dark hair, her quiver emptied of all arrows as she lays slump against whimpering wolven companions - and a cloaked figure wearing a mask which has now split clean in half, revealing a face of alabaster skin, similarly unmoving. And just past them, a white-haired elf wielding a blade made of pure arcane energy, dragging himself to stand with all the energy he has left. And finally - a tall, half-elven man with his long, dark hair loose all around him, clutching his bloodied abdomen and barely sitting upright against the rubble of a broken fountain, barely conscious. ]

This isn't—

[ right. We fought the dragon, and we— ]

I have to help. I can still help. I can save everyone!

[ Except that as she lifts her hands to cast a spell, she's greeted by dead air. The half-elven man gives her a wry smile and with a hoarse voice says, "She destroyed my home, Ori. Why couldn't you stop her?" ]

It's all my fault...

[ Ori feels a tug on her clothing and looks down and finds - not the child that had appeared to her in another nightmare - but her younger sister, Valphi, as a child. The young, red-skinned tiefling with white hair clings to Ori.

And though the nightmare had started with her in the streets of Duskvale, in another blink of an eye the surroundings are swept away into the landscape of a small village, and where once there were flames, things are now frozen, encased in ice. When the scenery is finally set once more, Ori appears as a child, herself, ostensibly older than the red tiefling by a few years. And despite being the older sibling, it's now the younger tiefling that seems to be the one in a protective stance.

"Those two girls are nothing but trouble. Look at what the younger one did now!" A villager exclaims, starting a chain of similarly charged remarks from others.

"It might have been an accident, but the truth is that they don't know how to control their magic and it's dangerous to have them around!"

"And where does the older one keep disappearing to in the forest? She always comes back not remembering where she'd been. What is wrong with them? I swear, that old man was foolish to have taken them in..."

Ori rests a hand on her younger sister's shoulder and says, ]

Val... don't. Let's just go. Please? I don't want to be here anymore.

[ But where her sister would have backed down and gone away with Ori, she instead says, in a cacaphonous voice that seems to echo the the voice of a grown woman which is then joined by the voices of several others,

"Why do you keep running away, Ori?"

But it's too late, and the young Ori runs without thinking, crashing into whomever as she tries to run in the direction of the woods nearby. ]

(( ooc: although I wrote the prompts kind of as one continuous nightmare, please feel free to have your character jump in at any point! the prompts are meant to be flexible and the character doesn't have to have seen the whole thing basically. feel free to reach out to me at camerata if you have any questions or something else you want to plot out with me! ))