#v { distortion }; (too late) you're at the party | elias

[ritualwritten]

Lonely! and Distortion!Elias both have a party motif and do a lot of hunting at parties.

Lonely!Elias leans on the more, well, lonely aspects of being a wallflower (seeing the party yet not participating nor being invited into the merriment and the isolation therein) or the feeling when you step outside for a smoke or close the bathroom door (muffled music and conversations creating a distance).  And his corner of the Lonely is very much reminiscent of a the morning after a party - all the remnants of life and fun and socialization but none of the people.

Distortion!Elias is more the sensory overload, the being unable to hear quite right, finding it hard to see, the difficulty of navigating a stranger’s home.  And he has placed the door in the perfect spot to be chosen accidentally, trap and relentlessly hunt the person in his halls to the point of hysteria, only to spit them back out at the peak of fear, babbling about monsters and impossible hallways.

And sometimes he doesn’t even have to chime in to have everyone start laughing or tell them it’s just a bad trip or say they’ve had too much for the night.

[ritualwritten]

my slightly more coherent Distortion!Elias Thoughts™:

The Distortion had been hunting Elias for A Hot Second; his being high 98% of the time and also perpetually tired creating a nice cocktail for the Spiral to take advantage of.  His being actively hunted means his work at the Institute manages to be even poorer and he has the habit of ending up in strange spots in the building.

Jonah still has him marked for possession, but a day before he could make the move, the Distortion pulls Elias into its halls.  Elias never reads the message that he had been promoted.

Elias manages well enough in the halls, staying alive against the odds. He was still alive in there when the Great Twisting began.  At the critical junction, it is Elias who finds the door to sabotage the Distortion, though he had no idea he was doing it at the time.

( I won’t say one way or another whether Michael had entered the halls at that point or not, gotta leave some fun flexibility! )

As the Distortion, Elias’s lankiness is heavily exaggerated, height often set such that he towers over everyone but looks like a gust might snap him in half.  While Elias never actually knew that Jonah was gunning to possess him, his distorted form carries a reaction to that intent: his eyes appear to be melting - as if daring one to even try to scoop them free.  He still wears his triangle glasses, though sometimes the lenses change shape.  One lens is always cracked and, through it, one can get a glimpse of the Distortion’s true form even when Elias is in more normal guise.

His halls are laden in vapor that smells of sickly sweet candied strawberries and stings the eyes, making it even harder to tell where anything is. 

No ire toward the Institute, really, he’s just here to cause problems on purpose. :)