ok i gotta stop altering this
Rainer's story arc, past to their present, can pretty much be summed up with Lord Huron's concept album Long Lost.
I would really love to dive into lore on the lake town/trail they live by if not just as an excuse to paint spooky lake shores and just more landscapes in general. It's got kind of a Lake Superior/Michigan vibe to it (if you know the spooky lake lore of those Great Lakes then you get it)
Rainer takes things easy by making solo hikers "get lost" when they reach the lake but does eventually loop them back to the main trail. They also take part in search and rescue, often being able to find lost hikers quickly and following them for a good bit before helping them.
They ride their horse just about everywhere and are super invested in it's welfare. The only thing significantly lacking is herdmates, but they're buddy enough that it gets along remarkably fine. Rainer assumes the horse is either marked by the Lonely or an avatar itself. They don't really bother to investigate this as it doesn't change the dramatic effect of a mysterious horseman galloping through the fog rolling off a weird lake.
They've got several other connections that I should talk about sometime but I'm not a writer.
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Statement of Eris [̴̡̡̯͇͕̻̝̱̘̐͗̓́̽̈́̈́͐͛̂̍̓̔̌̊͠R̸͙͎̼͈͑̌̽͒̽̓̅̀͘E̴͔̭̬̍̅́̃̎̏͋̂̇́̕̚D̴̡̫̤̰̝̲͍̪̖̥̥͙̭̭̰̱̜͖͍̹̟̬̋̑͛̆̀̄̚͜͜A̵̛͕͚͉͈͖̤̳̫̔̀̿̾͆͛͋̊̈́̄̿̀̒́͗͆̀̍̏́̊̐̑͝͠C̶̡̨̢̢̡̡̥͔̣̺̤̙̖͕̭̬̻̥͈̻̪̮̞̞̝̯͙̘̰̮̀̃͐̔͗͜ͅŢ̴̢̟̪̦̟̳̫̹̳͈͉̤͍̰̫̯͙̊̾̅̎̑̚E̷̡̢̛̞̼̜̞̪͓͕͉̰̘̞͉̤̺̮̭̯͛́̾͛̃̋̅̅̓͋̈́͆̆̑́̌̆̈͋͊̿͛̿̃̽̎̚͠͠ͅḐ̸̛̞͕̗̠̜̰̗̣̘͖̱̜̗͔̩͈͙̙̣̫̪̝̤͇͉̰̙̹̠̉ͅͅͅ]̶̛̻̟̥̘͇̬̫̹̠̤͕͔̏̓̕, regarding their university’s art school.
It was… I want to say a year ago. Maybe two, but my perception of time feels so strange now. It feels like I’m recalling some strange dream, but I know that what I saw was real. I know I lived this… experience.
To preface, I’m an art student at a local university. My university’s Arts building is definitely one of the older ones on campus and seems to have been renovated over time, leading to a very confusing layout. With all the additions and extra studios being repurposed and built over time, the place is pretty easy to get lost in if you don’t know it well. I like to say I know the place like the back of my hand from spending most of my classes there, I know I should, but… then I found the staircase. The door.
It was on my class list, the first day of my third year. “Advanced Visual Arts, Room 401”. I had no recollection of signing up for this class at all, and Room 401… shouldn’t exist. Rooms in the Arts building are numbered based on floors, with the 100s being on the 1st floor, 200s being on the 2nd… There is no 4th floor in this building. Nobody I asked had any idea where it could be; most looked at me like I was insane and some speculated that the room number was a typo, but I’d be damned if I missed my first class of the semester.
And so… I went looking for Room 401.
Looking back, I should have known something was horrifically wrong. The building seemed quieter the further I moved from the front studios, as if no classes were in session. I could hear the occasional distant voice echoing through the halls, but I never once saw another student or professor. I knew all these hallways, but the layout seemed different, like one of those dreams where a familiar location is… almost shuffled around. I eventually found myself on the 3rd floor access staircase - where else would I go if I was looking for this nonexistent 4th floor? - and it… It kept going. The staircase just kept spiraling up past the 3rd floor, into a space that I knew was never there. And at the top… A door. A standard wooden door, covered in stray paint splatters and labeled Room 401 with a rusted metal plate.
I don’t remember opening the door. I don’t remember stepping past that damn threshold. It was like I blacked out, like there’s a gap in my memories I can’t fill in. All I remember is the dread. The terror. The sense that something was wrong.
The door led into… I want to say it looked like part of the Arts building, but it didn’t. It was like an imitation, some kind of sick mockery. The walls were painted in sickly primary colors, so vivid they hurt my eyes to look at. The fluorescent lights overhead had a nauseating yellow cast to them. Hallways and doors branched out at odd angles that just didn’t look right, more like something out of a poor drawing.
I didn’t try to go back the way I came. Part of me knew the door wouldn’t open, and the thought made me feel sick with dread.
I’m not sure how long I’d been walking before the halls opened up into… what I can only describe as some kind of classroom, or maybe a gallery space. The walls were covered in these strange paintings; none of them were framed, just warped paper pinned to the walls, and I couldn’t make out any images. It wasn’t that they were abstract though, I knew I was supposed to be seeing something in them, but I just couldn’t decipher any of the images. A worn pedestal was placed in the center of the room, displaying a mannequin head. It appeared to be made of plaster, crudely painted to resemble… my face.
That, of all things, was my breaking point. I turned to leave, hoping to run back the way I came, but… the door to the room had vanished. It was just another wall, perfectly solid as if a door had never been there. I remember screaming, trying to claw away the papers and paintings in hope that another door was hidden beneath them, but I just… never got anywhere. There had to be hundreds of layers of the damn things, either that or… the room didn’t want me to go. And throughout my screaming, my feverish attempts to find a way out of this room… I felt a presence, like reality beginning to unravel around a set point… and that point was right behind me.
When I finally turned around to face it, when I saw what had been watching me struggle… it was like my screams couldn’t get out anymore. Trust me, I wanted to scream, but I… I couldn’t.
The thing, it… looked like me, but in the loosest, most awful sense. It was like seeing myself reflected in a funhouse mirror; it had my face, my hair, even the handmade jacket I was wearing, but… wrong. Distorted.
Its limbs were too long and disproportionate, almost appearing to bisect the pedestal it was sitting on as if its body didn’t know how to interact properly with anything physical. Its long, claw-like fingers twitched periodically, bent out of place as if they were broken. I couldn’t even focus on the buttons and patches on its jacket… Not when they changed appearance and position every time I looked at them. It just… smiled at me with this awful, knowing look in its painfully colorful eyes, like it knew something I didn’t.
And then… it laughed.
Its mouth opened, tearing right past the boundaries of its face to expose countless rows of teeth. The paintings all over the walls began to shift, incomprehensible images melting off the pages and bleeding together at a pace I couldn’t understand. It was like there was a message for me in there, one that I’d never be able to comprehend. And its voice… Its voice was like nails on a chalkboard, like the remnants of a lost radio signal, like glass shattering against my brain. I could hear it inside my head, burrowing and clawing at my psyche like a parasite while I dropped to my knees and screamed and screamed and-
…and my eyes snapped open.
I was… back on the 3rd floor staircase, surrounded by concerned students. Apparently somebody had heard me screaming and found me collapsed on the floor, nearly unconscious, but… I don’t remember that.
The stairs ended at the 3rd floor. Of course they did. They always have.
I understand if you don’t believe me, I really do… I’m not even sure if I believe myself, but… I can’t stop thinking about what happened. I keep seeing that door in my dreams, that same echoing voice and… no. No, it’s just my anxiety.
That’s it. Anxiety. It’s not real.
Statement ends.
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