An active, character-driven Hogwarts experience set in the early 2000s. Unique items, plots, and features. Non-canon; this isn't Harry Potter's story, it's ours.
The average-sized room was deceptively ordinary -- with stone walls, stone floor, and an ornate table in the middle. Atop the table were nine wooden boxes, filled with different types of small yet strange stones. Hovering above each box was a blank card, turning gently in the air as if by a unfelt breeze.
There was an uneasiness about the room and its boxes that couldn't quite be described.
A plaque reads:
"Poisons -- cursed objects -- deadly spells... one may never truly know or anticipate dangers hidden in ordinary places. If you choose well, we may spare you. If you choose wrong, may mercy grant you favor."
How to Play
Pick a card, indicated by its letter. The letter is for your reference only; it doesn't appear to your character.
Submerge the chosen card into its allocated box, keeping hold of it the entire time (due to the levitation charm).
A mod will roll a die to determine which of the three painful outcomes occur for your character:
Burning -- Spell Card
Icy sting -- Poison Card
Bite -- Book Card
The pain is brief and doesn't leave any marks. Lift the card out and release it to hover again.
You can pick one card per post -- up to a max of six cards. If you've matched 3 of the same card, you win.
Winning earns 200 exp to their Curses skill, and 20 exp to every other skill.
Although playing a mini-game, this is still an RP-thread. We strongly encourage immersing your character in this experience and challenge, as these threads are also designed for character development.
Post by Amber Lloyd on Mar 11, 2024 16:41:22 GMT 10
This time, the room was rather small compared to the one with the pond before. However, the hovering cards over boxes filled with weird stones gave the same eerie feeling as the dark pond.
Great, just great... Couldn't there just be a fun, happy room?
Amber hoped, at least the trial would be fun. Or was it a riddle, for a change, where she would need to match the cards to the boxes?
Curiously, she stepped closer and read the plaque, and grimaced.
Yeah, no riddle, but instead cursed objects or poison?!
Amber eyed the cards and stones before her. Surely not deadly ones, right? Well, nevertheless, she had to choose...but how? Guessing?
After a thorough glance, her fear was confirmed: There were no clues. She had to guess. Again!
This was almost as horrific as fire to her. Alright, fire beat it by far, but Amber still didn't like to just make a choice without thinking.
She sighed and surrendered with slumbed shoulders. Just picking a card, right?
She picked the top left floating card (A), because she could at least go via a system, and pulled. Though nothing else happened.
Did she still had to match it?
Amber looked down at the stones beneath it, and pulled the card towards them, working against the levitation charm, pushing the card into the stones until the first half of the card was hidden from her sight.
When Amber held down the card, there was an almost instant sensation of overbearing heat that consumed at her hand. Fear would grip her and cause her imagination to go wild -- why did the sensation feel so real? This would cause her to believe it to be far worse than it was.
When she let go of the card, however, she would see her hand wasn't hurt at all.
Released, the card would float back into place, but Amber would notice the colour changed and now it had a flaming skull on its face.
Post by Amber Lloyd on Mar 13, 2024 1:40:56 GMT 10
Amber had thought she was prepared for whatever came next - but she wasn't. Not if it was so sudden, and especially not when it involved fire.
Her hand was wrapped in heat once more, though was it only her hand?
To Amber, it felt like she was back in the burning barn, the fire closing in on her, droplets of sweat rolling down her forehead.
It was as if she almost could hear the screaming animals as well.
And her hand hurt like hell, like she was grilling it in fire.
Finally, what felt to her like ages, her instincts kicked in and she pulled her hand out of the fire, away from the card.
The images in her mind ceased, and she saw the room with the cards again.
The pain slowly ebbed away and she gently pressed her hand against her chest, feeling her fast beating heart.
Amber stared at the stones in front of her, still in kind of a daze, trying to push all lingering snippets of her memories away.
Why was it just so hard to fight against this? Why did everything with fire take her back to this childhood incident? Why could she remember it then so well, but not if she wanted to now?
Or was it just her imagination running wild in a situation such as this?
Amber hated to feel so helpless and awful when she was faced with her fear. When would this end?
She had thought, after the adventure with Joshua to the Fire-belly Geckos she had made progress. But now, she wasn't so sure anymore.
Even the Fyire in the Greenhouse had scared her. A plant!
Would she be able to train this fear away? Was such a thing even possible?
Uncertainty and a hint of despair began to take hold - but the image of Joshua and her fighting the fire successfully together with the cute Fire-belly Geckos made its way into her mind. And this was enough to remind her of the reason she had decided to fight against her fear after all.
Amber vehemently shook her head as to clear her mind, then clenched her fists, giving the red cards in front of her a death stare.
Of course it wouldn't be easy, but how could it? Nevertheless, she would not give up! She would against this until she didn't constantly experience this fear anew in this awful way.
She would never love fire - but she didn't want to fear it either.
With newfound resolve, her body recovered from the earlier ordeal, Amber picked the next card (C) in the row, pulling it down and shoved into the stones.
When Amber pressed the card down, she almost immediately lost all sensation in the tips of her fingers. This uncomfortable feeling crept over her skin, up her fingers and covered her hand. It was like an intense chill was freezing her to the very bone! The shock of the moment was gone as quick as the other two, and she was free to release the card.
This one flipped over to show a potion vial on it.
Post by Amber Lloyd on Mar 13, 2024 16:18:41 GMT 10
This time, Amber had fully expected to be hit again with the feeling of fire, and braced herself for it - just to feel her fingertips going numb.
Before she could even properly react to this change, the numbness had already spread upwards. And an immense cold was added.
It felt like her hand was covered in ice, sinking into her skin, increasing the cold at an alarming rate.
She didn't like it at all!
Because she didn't feel a thing in her fingers, she grabbed the arm holding the card with her other one and pulled, hoping her cramped up fingers would release the card.
But there was absolutely no issue in doing so. As soon as her fingers didn't touch the card anymore, the cold was gone and she could move her fingers without issue. The card floated back into its place.
Still, a shiver ran down her spine, and she snuggled her face deeper into the Hufflepuff scarf.
Well, it hadn't been pleasant, but at least it hadn't been the burn again...
Amber sighed, glanced back at the coloured cards, then tried to prepare herself for another ordeal before she pushed the next card (D) into the stones.
Last Edit: Mar 14, 2024 22:06:48 GMT 10 by Amber Lloyd
As soon as Amber pressed down the card, there was the sensation that something had sunk its fangs into her. Piercing points of pain gripped her, sending a shockwave of hurt up her hand and it would be hard for her to believe she would escape this unscathed.
So real was the pain that it was an immediate relief when it cut off, and she was free to release the card.
When it floated back into place, it flipped over to show a book on its face.
Post by Amber Lloyd on Mar 14, 2024 22:17:15 GMT 10
Amber's hand continued trembling, but she couldn't feel it anymore. It felt like her fingers had fallen asleep, and soon her hand followed.
A second later, an icy cold spread along her fingers and the back of her hand, and Amber thought she could make out ice crystals on it. Or did her mind play tricks on her?
Well, the pain was true. The sharp cold sank beneath her skin, chilling her to her bone.
Her hand stopped trembling and instead literally froze up, grapping the card in a cramped way.
She inhaled sharply and pulled her hand away with the help of the other one, just in time for the card to release her.
The card floated up gain, and the pain slowly ebbed away. However, the cold felt somehow still stuck to her, and her hole body lightly shook.
Or perhaps it was just the knowledge that the challenge was still not over...
How long had she to endure all that? When would it finally end? Had she to pull down all the cards left?
Amber shuddered at the thought, and quickly pushed it aside.
'Don't think too much about, act!' she advis d herself, grabbed the next card (F) and stuffed it into the stones.
Something grabbed Amber's wrist in an iron grip, impossible to break free of -- even with magic.
The card slipped through her fingers, levitating to forewarn that she'd chosen the wrong card. Each hovering card melted into sludge, dripping onto the stones -- contaminating them into an oozing, dark substance. It began to burn, like hot acid. Harsh magic and intense pain spread up her arm from the unmovable box.
Amber was trapped, the pain worsening and magic growing... awaiting her to cry out or fall to her knees; to relinquish her strength or resolve. Only then, at her weakest and most affected, would she be shown mercy.
Then it was gone, and her wrist was released. The box of colourful stones was back to normal, as if nothing at all had happened.
You lost the mini-game... ...but endurance rewards 20 exp (Curses skill).
Post by Amber Lloyd on Mar 15, 2024 22:33:49 GMT 10
Amber had expected everything would go as the last few attempts had. When her wrist was grabbed and hold into place, she thought it might be just another trap.
However, as soon as the card escaped through her fingers, she knew something was wrong.
With an eerie feeling, she watched the card float up and join the others. Suddenly, ever card melted into a kind of slimy substance and dripped onto the stones beneath them, turning them in turn into ooze.
"Why ooze again?!" Amber exclaimed, though these were the last words she could think of until her own hand was submerged in slime.
Steam evaporated from the slime, and Amber felt the heat increasing. Out of instinct she tried to remove her hand but it didn't budge.
Her hand felt like it was put right into something like liquid fire, it burned like hell. It was way worse than the burning before, though it didn't really remind her of real fire at the same time. It instead felt like it would melt her hand away, the ooze sinking into beneath her skin and into her bones.
It could very well happen as Amber couldn't properly see her hand through this dark sludge.
But all the time earlier it hadn't really affected her hand directly, just her mind. And it stopped soon after. This would surely be the same right now. She just had to endure the pain for a brief moment, right?
However, the burning sensation didn't stop. The pain increased and spread up her arm, as if to punish her for these thoughts.
"Let me go!" Amber hissed at the box and desperately pulled on her arm, but to no avail.
The pain steadily increased, and Amber wracked her brain on how to escape that trap.
Was there something she could do? A spell perhaps? Destroying the boxes?
She pushed herself against the table on which the boxes were, her hand sinking deeper into the slime as a result and the table not moving an inch.
Instead, the pain increased by a margin, and Amber slowly started to loose her mind.
She was afraid she would have to endure this pain forever. Was there nothing she could do, no one to save her?
But she would survive! There surely was a way!
Just to prove her wrong, the pain grew once more. Despair filled now Amber's heart and mind, and together with the increasing pain she couldn't think about anything anymore. She just endured the pain.
But she never had been hurt this much before.
She writhed in pain, her body twisting and turning in agony. And her mind wavered.
Another batch of pain was everything it then took for Amber to finally crack. Tears poured out of her eyes. Her knees started to feel wobbly, and her surroundings spun.
"Make it stop! Just let me go, please!" Amber cried out, having given up completely.
As if the boxes had just waited to hear those words, the pain was gone, and with it the ooze. Her hand was released.
It took Amber a second to realise this, then her knees gave way beneath her and she landed on the ground where she continued to sob for short while.
She hold her hand to her chest, clenching the ends of Joshua's scarf around, burrying her nose into it.
What would she give now for a hug from her friend...
When she finally calmed down, swiping away the remains of her tears, she stood up, throwing the table a death stare.
Amber really hoped to never see it again.
Not bestowing the boxes another glance, she headed to the exit, leaving this horrible room behind her.
[OOC: Exit]
Last Edit: Mar 15, 2024 23:04:39 GMT 10 by Amber Lloyd
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