Topic: Our Salvation: It Is Written (Read 243912 times)

penguinofhonor · « **Reply #1620 on:** September 22, 2016, 07:02:38 am »

"I'm starting to feel like I belong in neither world," I try to say. I then try breathing, and if that doesn't work, I try leaving.

TopHat · « **Reply #1621 on:** September 22, 2016, 02:04:37 pm »

"You better not be talking to me."
Deep breath, run up the wall. We can make it! Then chuck Daniels off and use him as a crash mat.

Xantalos · « **Reply #1622 on:** September 22, 2016, 04:14:27 pm »

"Something else!"

Harry Baldman · « **Reply #1623 on:** September 23, 2016, 06:22:17 pm »

Quote from: Toaster on September 21, 2016, 08:38:30 pm

"Uh. I've never been in one myself, but I do think this one is going on a bit long. Surely it's wearing off. Or maybe it's an aftershock. Might as well ask her!"

Converse. Be helpful. Just generally observe, really; this isn't travelling weather.

Should she? Probably should. She's getting a bit impatient, see. Been so long since she's moved around again, she says, then walks on the wobbling ground over to the commander, who seems to be watching out for other likely events today such as meteorites falling out of the sky or the clouds coming down as per their thousand-year-bargain of rains with the King In Green to harvest the unwary living.

[What's The Harm: 2]

After her question of whether this earthquake is going to be ending soon is met with one of the evilest glares you've ever seen the guardswoman returns dejected. She's getting antsy, could you-

Somebody calls out from the gathered crowd. Two people seem to be running this way from the castle. And one more threw some kind of weird wobbly thing off the castle wall and fell onto it. You can't quite see from behind all these people, but you assume it's not too outlandish a claim given what you've seen.

Quote from: Xantalos on September 22, 2016, 12:19:58 am

angry

"You get the FUCK back into the shrine this is NOT the TIME"

Hopefully Wilde gets us out; if not, REND the nearest castle wall to bits to make an exit.

Necessary clarification: not the entire wall, just a section of it. Assist the demolition with floppy worm-arm punches if necessary.

Spew profanity.

[Asking Nicely: 3]

The tendrils recoil at your words, seemingly more sensitive than you'd expect an eldritch hunger from beyond time and space to be. You are about to say yet more, but you are interrupted when Mr. Wilde uses you as a whiplike climbing tool in a way you can only describe as extremely unpleasant as you do your best to wrap your limbs around stray architecture as he drags his own, much less flexible carcass after you like some wanton explorer. Fortunately, it does not take all that long to ascent the impromptu tower-ramp, and you are slung at solid stone only about twice more before you're up.

You're about to wonder what the plan is to get down from here, but before you manage to ask Mr. Wilde tosses you right off the wall. Surprisingly it doesn't hurt all that much even when you bang your head against the dirt. You guess having no bones to break does have certain advantages.

No sooner than you think this, however, Mr. Wilde comes flying off the wall right onto you, and you discover exactly how it feels to be a cheap stretchy rubber toy in the hands of an all too cruel child as his weight causes your organs to momentarily find themselves in a much flatter and more spread out configuration, and you hear an involuntary squeak start to come from your mouth and not stop as you realize that this is a lot like the last time you were in this much pain, except this time it's gone from 0 to 100 in a fraction of a second.

Quote from: AoshimaMichio on September 22, 2016, 02:03:49 am

"Hello there you weird thing. You are in need of guidance, right? Wanna see how viking handles things? Follow my example!"

Leading by example, Leif withdraws into his mental world, inviting the sea in. Repeatedly, if it doesn't catch my drift. There he shows aftermath of apocalypse, and how to rebuild broken anew. Especially gods like Hœnir. From memory of knowledge new beings imagined into existance. Recreate all Æsir and Vanir just to show it how it's done. Maybe it can follow my example. Bring my gods into reality.

You don't need to invite it in. Your thoughts reflect as bubbles rise to intercept them, eager to taste of your imagination.

[Finding Meaning: 1]

And what an imagination it is.

There were eddies underground that had never seen the sun, and you teach them from experience how it is that the gods party. Afterimages of the Stork Clan fly in on wings of light, not yet fully consumed in meaning as they start to circle you. Worlds swim like waves beneath as stories spill from you unbidden, of long wars of the past, of great men who outlasted them! The great tribes of the gods, and their even greater wars! Intrigue! Violence! Alcohol!

One story bleeds into another, and most bleed on their own - very literally, as words take shape even before they are spoken, and your thoughts form a feedback loop of free association, giants! Aesir and Vanir, Loki, great Loki! They dive out, and dive back in, their realms crashing in the raging sea. Your stories rise and swell, and take on life, and then take flight, figures in winged helms and tall snaking ships like angry dragons flying up and outward, trailed by giant half-formed shapes of primordial creation riding upon great glaciers of the closest that annihilating light can get to solid ice. You see Surtr's mirror image, glowing even brighter than the sword he was to wield! They rise and come forth, gods and enemies and whoever else, wolves and giants and ships made of toenails, all made of light, all leaving trails of luminescent bubbles forming into small glories seldom seen, each shape shifting as new stories nestle into it!

A whole five generations of the sort of fuckup that mythology invariably enshrines relish the chance to ride again - as they float into the air, their sins evaporate from their impermanent minds. To you they raise their pints of light, and they roar and sing with the rumbling earth - they shall fight and dance until the dawn and beyond, they swear as a terrible wind starts to rise!

Quote from: penguinofhonor on September 22, 2016, 07:02:38 am

"I'm starting to feel like I belong in neither world," I try to say. I then try breathing, and if that doesn't work, I try leaving.

[Taking In The Murk: 5]

It takes a certain abandon to even attempt to breathe water. Something inside your head reels at the mere thought. Rightfully so, you immediately figure as you let the water enter your nose. It feels thick, it burns your sinuses as algal toxins scour your insides. You double down, open your mouth and eyes, and start dragging more in, and vomit bits of air out of your lungs as you embrace drowning, abandon survival, finding yourself in an airless state where by all rights you should die. Your body tries to fight it, but the fisher holds you steady.

You feel it, the lightness, the closeness of death. It comes close, but does not quite cross the distance, lingering at the edge of your perception as your lungs fill completely with the disgusting water of the lake, your eyes bulging, waterlogged and stinging, the cold of the lake after a cool night reaching to your very bones. Your heartbeat slows so much as to be imperceptible, and you go still.

And yet you do not die, and you stay in the fisher's hands, breathing no longer, but not dead. Minutes pass, or possibly hours. Your consciousness does not fade, and your eyes begin to discern more as you face downward. You move your arms experimentally, and they respond - sluggishly at first, and without real feeling, but they move. Your skin has turned bluish from cold and lack of air. Your voice sounds a little strange when you speak, something having gone a little wrong in the vocal folds.

You live, mermaid. You belong on both sides after all. And in this, you belong to the border.

Quote from: TopHat on September 22, 2016, 02:04:37 pm

"You better not be talking to me."
Deep breath, run up the wall. We can make it! Then chuck Daniels off and use him as a crash mat.

[Spider Parkour: 5]

You decide upon the conscientious course of action, and instead of dragging Mr. Daniels around like an animal decide to wave him at a nearby elevated piece of debris in a one-handed giant swing. Taking your subtle hint, he wraps his sausage arms around it for dear life, and you utilize the man to make progress up to a steady piece of rubble. You repeat the process about two more times, Mr. Daniels groaning the whole way through as his jelly-like form is put through its paces, and eventually make it up to the wall. It has, much to your delight, failed to crumble! Thus far, anyway.

[Avenues of Escape: 4]

Both Nately and Deirdre have already made it down in a fit of unusual productivity, you notice as a parapet that she had wrapped a rope around crumbles away and falls to the ground, nearly squashing the nearby Nately. They look up at you. You look down at them, then at Mr. Daniels. This will require you to take your cooperation to the next level, you explain, and before he can ask what that might entail you toss him unceremoniously off the battlements, his boneless form impacting the shaking earth with a harmless flop.

Pleased at his excellent elasticity, you proceed to execute a leap from the battlements right atop the poor man, an unearthly squeak of agony issuing from his gaping mouth as you land on his rubbery, boneless torso and bounce right off with a timely roll, only to find Deirdre a good hundred meters away as she seems to have started sprinting away as soon as it became clear what you were doing, and even the normally much more robust Nately appears to have followed her shortly afterward.

You look at Mr. Daniels. He is still squeaking, though his pitch has lowered from nails on chalkboard to a more respectable busted accordion-like tone.

Spoiler: Status (click to show/hide)

Xantalos · « **Reply #1624 on:** September 23, 2016, 06:39:32 pm »

"Hhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaateeeeee"

Recover from the pain of that the best I can and then try to stand up.

Toaster · « **Reply #1625 on:** September 23, 2016, 08:40:39 pm »

"Oh dear."

Watch for those four figures. See if they know anything about what is going on.

((Harry, have I said your writing is great lately? Because your writing is great.))

AoshimaMichio · « **Reply #1626 on:** September 24, 2016, 01:32:19 am »

Pints of light? I want those. Forget the world domination, it's party time after all.

Leif lifts his own imaginary pint for them. "LET THE GREATEST PARTY OF AGES BEGIN!"

Come forth, Ægir, and shine! Rise, o great Loki, and play! Blow your horn, Heimdallr, and begin the party earnest!

penguinofhonor · « **Reply #1627 on:** September 24, 2016, 07:22:32 am »

"So... what is this place exactly?" I look around a bit, but don't move far.

TopHat · « **Reply #1628 on:** September 24, 2016, 03:45:33 pm »

"Sorry about that, but at least this way one of us can still walk properly. We'd look a real pair of fools if I'd avoided you and broken my legs on landing, wouldn't we?"
Follow Deirdre and Nately. Carry on helping Daniels along if he doesn't object.

Harry Baldman · « **Reply #1629 on:** September 25, 2016, 05:46:40 am »

Quote from: Xantalos on September 23, 2016, 06:39:32 pm

"Hhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaateeeeee"

Recover from the pain of that the best I can and then try to stand up.

[Agony Management: 2]

You never really bought into the idea that pain is an illusion, and it sure as hell doesn't seem that way now. But hey, you think you're kind of topped out on pain, which would be good if it didn't hurt so goddamn much. So it's with this in mind that you try to stand up, which seems like it's going to take a while before Mr. Wilde loses patience and picks you up in order to lug you over to the riverside, where a rope bridge has been taking several minutes to become increasingly rickety. At least he uses a fireman's carry this time, letting your noodle of a torso flap around his shoulders as he brings you out to a questionably stable rope bridge.

Quote from: Toaster on September 23, 2016, 08:40:39 pm

"Oh dear."

Watch for those four figures. See if they know anything about what is going on.

[Navigating the Crowd: 4]

You push and perhaps slightly elbow your way through the crowd until whoever is standing in front of you is short enough for you to comfortably see over. In this case that would be the queen, who appears to have sat down in an effort to manage a rather terrible bout of motion sickness, a few servants (and the lord as well, but he hardly counts anyway) kneeling down in front of her and offering nauseatingly ineffective moral support in her time of need.

You look over this less than heartening scene to observe a young, wild-eyed lad cross the increasingly unsafe rope bridge, followed by the careful crossing of a young woman wearing the garb of a castle servant. They are received with lukewarm enthusiasm, apparently having little in the way of friends or relatives. A rather small, dwarfish fellow in particular asks rather intently whether they've seen his brother, but it appears they've had no such luck.

Meanwhile, the castle continues to crumble behind you, walls splitting and coming apart, the main keep collapsing in on itself.

Quote from: AoshimaMichio on September 24, 2016, 01:32:19 am

Pints of light? I want those. Forget the world domination, it's party time after all.

Leif lifts his own imaginary pint for them. "LET THE GREATEST PARTY OF AGES BEGIN!"

Come forth, Ægir, and shine! Rise, o great Loki, and play! Blow your horn, Heimdallr, and begin the party earnest!

[Hitching A Ride: 1]

You seem to have a rather noticeable disadvantage compared to these specters conjured by mythology, which is that you, very noticeably unlike them, are still very much beholden to the laws of gravity. As their mighty ships cast off to the four winds, carrying raiding parties heralding the end of all things, they seem to rather forget this also, and after a solid fifteen minutes of you shouting for the bastards to wait up and take you along you're left all alone by the widening canyon, the quakes calming down as their violent elements spill out to perpetrate chaos in a much more direct fashion. Distant detonations of bright white start to kick up mushrooms of dust on both sides of the canyon, leaving you feeling a little left out here as the inspiration rolls away from this region and miles toward the east and west, their shapes becoming slowly unrecognizable as your imagination is relayed through an otherworldly game of Chinese whispers.

Quote from: penguinofhonor on September 24, 2016, 07:22:32 am

"So... what is this place exactly?" I look around a bit, but don't move far.

Here is where the other half lives, and light seldom enters. Would you like to look around? You certainly would.

It is still difficult to see anything, however, but the water does certainly feel like water even as your body becomes numb to the wet and cold. You briefly relearn how to swim as the fisher begins to take you a slight distance away from the water wall, god-rays filtering through the water as you turn to face the water line.

You notice that you still seem to float, the water trying to displace you to the surface, pushing you upward. You begin paddling as well, trying to keep yourself low as the fisher swims to shore in great strokes of her free arm. For most it is unwise to touch the surface, for air brings drowning if not approached carefully.

You land at the spot where you first saw the fisher in the reflection, your feet resting softly on the sludgy inverse-ground as the fisher orients you upside-down next to herself. It takes a moment to figure out how you're supposed to stand, your sense of balance trying to betray you at every turn, and eventually you manage to not float right into the sludge, which seems to support your weight, and also not sink into the depths which, now that you look up, don't actually have a bottom that you can see, even though your vision is very limited.

From here the water's surface looks a lot like it did from the other side, a dim reflection of the lake's own depths. Or is it? It seems oddly still, the motion of the water producing no distortion or change. You delicately maneuver with your arms to look behind you, where great towers of algae extend downward from the sludge and wave gently, their thick stem-like bodies leading you to confuse them for trees at first glance. You see a school of small fish streak rapidly underhead with a bubbling noise, the fisher readying her net briefly before realizing it's too late to catch any.

As your eyes adjust, stinging less with each minute as you lose feeling in them, you begin to see more. Deeper in, the algae grow into stranger shapes as less and less light grows available, their shapes decreasingly reflective of anything you remember from the surface.

Quote from: TopHat on September 24, 2016, 03:45:33 pm

"Sorry about that, but at least this way one of us can still walk properly. We'd look a real pair of fools if I'd avoided you and broken my legs on landing, wouldn't we?"
Follow Deirdre and Nately. Carry on helping Daniels along if he doesn't object.

Fortunately, Mr. Daniels offers little coherent resistance to your efforts to carry him out to relative safety, and you flop him across your shoulders like an oversized mink before getting straight out to what you're fairly sure is a rope bridge.

[Escape From Anglefork: 4]

Fortunately it appears to have held up - mostly, anyway. Deirdre seems to have let Nately take the initiative on crossing and, when he doesn't seem to have plummeted into the river as a result, proceeded to cross herself, stepping onto the shaking shore where a rather large crowd of castle residents and guards await. You wonder if this bridge is calibrated for the weight of both you and Mr. Daniels. Or, rather, whether it still would be as its foundations have become increasingly unsecured in the violent upheaval of the earth.

Spoiler: Status (click to show/hide)

AoshimaMichio · « **Reply #1630 on:** September 25, 2016, 07:42:51 am »

"They ditched me? I can't believe this! My own gods ditched me! My party... Well fuck it then, back to world domination."

As a son of vikings, I'm master seas and king of oceans, it is my birthright. Heed my call, ye who are broken, and calm thy tits!

Toaster · « **Reply #1631 on:** September 25, 2016, 08:01:40 am »

Thomas called out to the recent crossers. "Pardon me! Do any of you know anything about earthquakes?"

penguinofhonor · « **Reply #1632 on:** September 25, 2016, 09:10:41 am »

"Do you live in a town or city? Maybe down there?" I gesture towards the depths.

Xantalos · « **Reply #1633 on:** September 25, 2016, 12:51:13 pm »

"Just fucking fling me across, I'll live. Oh wait you're not strong like me. Never mind, I'll go across myself."

While I'm talking, try to snag that well containment thing he still has. If I succeed in that, fling it into the crowd on the other side, hopefully hard enough to break the container.

TopHat · « **Reply #1634 on:** September 25, 2016, 03:45:02 pm »

"If you say so. We probably won't be seeing each other again, so best of luck out there. Cheerio, then!"
Drop Daniels and then try to catch up with Nately and Deirdre.

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Author Topic: Our Salvation: It Is Written (Read 243912 times)

penguinofhonor

Re: Our Salvation: Tearing the Stitches of Reality

TopHat

Re: Our Salvation: Tearing the Stitches of Reality

Xantalos

Re: Our Salvation: Tearing the Stitches of Reality

Harry Baldman

Re: Our Salvation: Tearing the Stitches of Reality

Xantalos

Re: Our Salvation: Tearing the Stitches of Reality

Toaster

Re: Our Salvation: Tearing the Stitches of Reality

AoshimaMichio

Re: Our Salvation: Tearing the Stitches of Reality

penguinofhonor

Re: Our Salvation: Tearing the Stitches of Reality

TopHat

Re: Our Salvation: Tearing the Stitches of Reality

Harry Baldman

Re: Our Salvation: Tearing the Stitches of Reality

AoshimaMichio

Re: Our Salvation: Tearing the Stitches of Reality

Toaster

Re: Our Salvation: Tearing the Stitches of Reality

penguinofhonor

Re: Our Salvation: Tearing the Stitches of Reality

Xantalos

Re: Our Salvation: Tearing the Stitches of Reality

TopHat

Re: Our Salvation: Tearing the Stitches of Reality