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It was fun for a long time but towards the end it just started to drag

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I wish I could have joined in.

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Total Members Voted: 28

[WillowLuman]

[In other words, just in time for Christmas XD]

[IRL events increasingly worrying me. Still, experts aren't concerned about NK enough to push the Doomsday Clock up another minute, so maybe NK is just full of hot air.]

Five elves sat around the noxious fire emanating from the giant flower, the one with the sideways face occasionally massaging the petals. One could tolerate rotten meat smell when on a night this cold. Askak trudged into the room and took a seat on the earthen bench. "First snow of the winter," he sighed. "If  Teg remembers correctly, this is a fourth-year, and there shall be a storm from the north soon."

Alafas, the lidless elf next to him, shook his head slowly. "I hope he remembers how the old Master got the trees to start heating. The rats will creep in again if the drifts start piling up."

The others nodded at this. "Do not worry about the rats," said Askak. "Teg found a bottle of old Master's fungal book potion. We shall leave it along the edges of the cellars." They sat for a while in silence, holding hands and hand-like appendages over the warmth. After a few minutes, the scorpion-elf finally brought up what weighed on him. "How are the Shapeless doing? Any improvement?"

Alafas seemed to slump a little lower at this. "It is not looking good. Their transformations are getting more erratic. A few have not changed back for weeks now, while others shift constantly."

"Can we at least finally let some of them get some fresh air?"

"Sadly, no. When I open the door an hour ago, most of them cowered against the corner, and Algi lunged at me. If one of them lost control, our neighbors might not react well if they got too close."

Askak sighed. "Very well. We may need to ask for their doctor, before winter entombs them. I shall send for him myself if their condition does not improve by next week."


The rat seemed almost as surprised as he was, but did not take long to speak. "I now know that you cannot be a creature of Her, for She never ventured into the Dream. But thus we thought we alone knew how to enter here. Now I see that there is another."

"I agree, no-one seems to do enough meditating around here. Well, or enough getting temporarily erased from existence. But nevermind that. You understand everything I say here, right?"

"Apparently," said the rat. "You are strange. Somehow, you feel as if you are partly Of this place. Were you born here, in the Dreamworld?"

"Not exactly, but I guess I stayed here for a while on the way from somewhere else. Now, what I want to know is, why do you pursue Wierd?"

"Wierd? I do not understand... your Dreams, looks like... looks like... Yes. Him. I do know of him. We all do. I have Dreamed of him many times, and I have Dreamed of him with others in counsel, too. Us who know well the ways of Dreamworld spend much of our Dreaming on him. He is becoming Her, and we see Death walking inside him. We watched as Her eye-words reach out to harden him against all that is good."

[wierd]

Twisting an offensive spell in this fashion wasn't easy. Fireballs were MEANT to be conjured up, and shot off at high speeds, not studiously maintained, and made to slowly float around like fireflies. Further, they were intended to kill things by burning them up into little crisps. Not regulated on their heat output to unthaw half-frozen dwarves.

Be that as it may, they were proving to be effective, and slowly, little by little, warmth and life crept back into his extremities. Breathing deep again, he resumed walking.

"Aren't you going to put those out?" Asked Lana, watching the little balls of light bounce and try to keep up with the walking necromancer.

"No." He said curtly. "I think the dew is picking up, and I would rather have a few scalded spots than frostbite."

"You sure? If I had as much alcohol in me as you probably do, I'd try to keep as far away frm fre as I possibly could!"

The image was quite silly, he admitted.

"Too bad all that alcohol doesn't work like antifreeze!" He joked back. Being at least warmed up had returned some of his sense of humor, and the two of them laughed at his expense together.

The dew laiden ocean mists washing in had indeed grown thicker, and was now a veritable fog of chill air, by the time they reached the ocean's edge. The whispering crashes and roars of the waves lapping at the frigid shoreline filled the air, and mingled with the sounds of the wind in the nearby naked trees.  This was the place.

"Ok, I'm not getting any closer." Said Lana abruptly, halting well away from where the waves lapped against the shore.

"Why not?" Asked weird curiously.

"Well, for starters.." she began matter of factly. "It's moving water."

Weird nodded.

"And secondly, it's salt."

This illicted a demented cackle from the necromancer, and nearly made him lose focus on the firey orbs buzzing abut his person, making them flicker and flit about erratically.

'Isn't that just a bit of superstitious claptrap?!" He rasped betwee bouts of laughter.

"You wouldn't think so if you had the nausea and weakness I do around such things!" She scolded.


"Well, You don't have to come down here.." he said reassuringly. "It will be easier to do this up where the water laps the shoreline anyway."

"Deal!" She said, and crossed the gap to exactly that location and parked herself. "Now, let's see if you have anything left in you after kindling those ridiculous things for so long!" She chided bemusedly.

"Watch it, or I'll douse you with seawater." He joked back.

'You wouldn't dare!"

The two of them laughed hard at that, as weird put out the floating spaceheater orbs, and concentrated on bringing the fires of hell to the sands there, where the water rolled up and down the beach. If he did this right, the ocean would repeatedly douse the coast in fresh saline, and the fires he would maintain would dry it quickly, leaving a thick crust of salt behind.

Steeling himself for the immense amount of juice it would need, he set to work.

[WillowLuman]

[Didn't Lana warp, hop, and skip across the ocean nightcrawler-style while we weren't looking to try and warn people about her father?]

[wierd]

[HALF-demon. Rather than being outright prevented from crossing, simply experiences negative consequences from doing so. I note, she wasn't very happy after her errand. It could be something she doesn't like to talk about. You know, like going near an open sewer is quite doable, just very, very unpleasant? The story as I understand it, is that demons are repelled by pure substances, and manifestations of concentrated life. Salt represents a pure earth substance, and the ocean is the primordial source of life. Rivers move, and by that movement, evade stagnation, and teem with life. Demons aren't actually "hurt" by salt or moving water, so much that it is just repulsive, like a festering open sewer. Remember, attracted to desolate, and inhospitable localities. Lana is a half demon so the spiritual sympathetic magic running counter to her demonic parentage wouldn't be as intense as if she were a full demon; she can "tolerate" it if she needs to, but I doubt she would consider it a pleasing experience. The same aspect (purity) is what makes silver effective against malevolent magics and entities, like vampires and demons. Likewise with garlic, which is thought to be purative for the blood. Rather than outright revelry in corruption, death, decay, torment, other wholly demonically aligned forces, I would say Lana tries to find a balance in those forces, and finds concentrations of either to be unwholesome. Eg, she likes the natural beauty of the freshly fallen snow, but wouldn't like a deserted glacier.]

[WillowLuman]

"You believe that Wierd... is becoming Thari?"

"At first, we thought he was a saviour. Redemption. He destroyed Her with fire. But she still remains, in the Writing. He brought a monster, and he brought his fire, more terrible than before. He found one of our women out minding her own business, and tortured her. Hundreds rushed, in shock, to see, and he murdered all of them. Much later, we saw him take a box from something dead but moving and inside, there were Her Writings!"

"And that is why you want to kill him?"

[WillowLuman]

[Been drawing blanks on this, sorta. Need inspiration. Need to get to the end of this conversation, so we can get to morning and everyone else can do things again.]

"Kill him? I doubt such a thing is possible, he being powerful enough to kill Her. There is one amongst us, another Dreamer, who nurses a faint hope that he might be turned from his evil path and made our ally. But this too I doubt. All that walk on two legs are our enemies. They have always killed us or shunned us on sight. She made them not ignore us, keeping us alive to work Her evil upon, but now she is dead, and we face annihilation as well as torture. Wierd must be stopped, we try to do this by destroying his Writings before they can bring Her back."

HugoLuman had to think for a while, he had to reply carefully. Wierd had killed hundreds of sentient beings, hundreds of people, albeit unknowingly. When he first encountered them, they must have seemed like evil, twisted, malicious creatures of Thari. Now, he knew on some level that they were intelligent, but out of fear for his own safety, out of paranoia and steadily eroding peace of mind, out of desperation, he had nearly created their annihilation. He still saw vicious monsters, angry, swarming threats to everyone else, and was acting with misguided but good intentions. And yet, misguided good intentions also led to Thari....

The rats, on the other hand, also acted out of self-defense. Thrust into a hostile world, they reacted with hostility. HugoLuman didn't know how many they numbered in total, but with their hatred, they could, conceivably, swarm in the night and overwhelm them all, if they put their minds to it, and overcame their fear. More likely, though, they might succeed in brutally murdering Wierd, or pushing him to dangerous limits of insanity. Either way, an immense hatred was waiting to spill over...

HugoLuman hoped he said the right thing. "I must tell you: I have spoken with Wierd. But you must understand, I am not his agent. He did not know of your people, though he hates Thari and her twisted works as much as you do. He mistook you for more of her's, which is why he killed so many that day. Now your efforts to stop Thari's evil make him think that you are her creatures, sent to torment him in revenge. I don't condone what he's tried to do to drive you away, and I don't condone the deaths he's caused, but try to understand that nothing he knows about you is true."

[wierd]

[Weird is a number of things, but neglectful is not one of them. He realizes he has placed you into an insanely dangerous position. After collecting the salt, he will come check up on you, to make sure you don't have a hole gnawed in your craw. This could lead to a number of possible outcomes. Depends on how you want to play it. Regardless, a direct dialog is necessitated. The rats don't understand their own potentials to totally overwhelm a superior foe, and that he has literal nightmares about his afternoon in the microcline tower basement, and how he was nearly overwhelmed there. Perhaps an agreement can be reached, given a mutual threat posed to both sets of local residents: the crash site, and its spreading pollution. The rats would be especially impacted by an environmental catastrophe, and things are primed to get worse, once the nascent syndrome capabilities of the contaminated plant and animal life manifests. The rats would be unaware of this threat, but may be able to convey that through dialog. If the stop tormenting his mind, he can finally sleep, clear his head, and work at resolving the common problem. Perhaps working with him instead of driving him mad by inches would work to build a tenuous trust.)

[WillowLuman]

The astral rat thankfully did not seem angered at this, but also took a while to respond. "If you have spoken to him, then there is reason to believe you are his agent indeed. But also you can see into the Dreamworld, so there is reason to believe you are trustworthy. But Her killer has looked upon Her writing. It corrupts him We have seen him writing, and his writings are shaped like hers. The writing must be destroyed, his threat and Hers ended. This very night, I hear the remains of a tortured victim were seen in his lair. Alive yet in agony. Just like Her."

"But don't you see? Thari's got both of you: everything you do to defeat each other only provokes the other further. Continuing on, it can only end in some hideous fate for both of you at once."

"I suppose there is wisdom in what you say. But if we do not keep trying to stop him, he surely will unbind evil, continuing on unopposed and hating us as do all the two-legged giants."

"Look, I can help you destroy the texts. I can talk to him and try to make him understand. You must end this."

"I hear your wisdom, but such things cannot be decided right here, right now. Much that is new has been said, I must return to the People, confer with the others, and Dream on this with them. But perhaps we shall leave him be, for a day. If you will hold him at bay."

"I swear it."

"We shall Dream again. There is much to discuss."

HugoLuman was back in the room, the white rat was no longer the same size as him. After a moment, its eyes rolled back and it stood up, walking slowly back to the others. They withdrew soundlessly.

[Gizogin]

[I smell a rat trouble brewing.  Or, more accurately, I smell a possible resolution to said trouble, which has been brewing for quite some time.]

[Wierd, kinda waiting on you here.  Gizogin's asleep, X isn't doing anything important, and Lana's at the beach with you.  Anything I could contribute right now would just be fluff.]

[wierd]

[I work second! I litterally just woke up here! I'll wrap up the beach scene a little later.]

[Ok, its later.]

Weird cracked his knuckles, closed his left eye as was his nervous habbit when concentrating on somthing (a hold over from a dangerous reaction to his immunization shots as a child that had nearly left his left eye paralyzed, and had taken years of rehabilitation to master controlling it again), and let the beach have it.  The hot inandecense of excited sodium ions lit the air in a brilliant orange-yellow hue, rythmically snuffed into darkness by the gentle swishing of the water rolling up the beach.

Lana, completely defying her earlier statements about liking the cold, moved closer to the fire, and put her arms out as if to warm herself beside it.

"I thought you liked the cold?" He asked slightly sarcastically.

"What? Can't a girl change her mind? Honestly, you must not know a thing about girls!" She retorted promptly, followed by a raspberry. Her tone was a perfect blend of humor, sarcasm, joviality. The kind you knew you had been insulted by, but really couldn't rise to without sounding like an ass.

Weird rolled his eyes, and continued his magical assault upon the sandy beach. The billowing cloud of hot steam erupting from the intermittent flaming inferno mingled with the misty sea spray, but was considerably warmer, if every bit as wet.

"Hey!" Shouted Lana at him in a girly, fussy way. "The fire's going out! You aren't pooping out on me are you?" She demanded.

He looked, and sure enough, the fire wasn't nearly as intense as it should be for what he was putting out.. maybe it was the weather, or maybe the ocean water was messing with it somehow? He bit his lip, and pushed harder, feeling the silvery music resound inside him to the point it felt like it would rattle his teeth.  The fire blazed hot again.

"Much better!" Giggled Lana, acting like she was completely enjoying the heat of the flames. "Thank you."

"Glad you like it..." he growled. Handling this much energy was hard work, and it felt like the fire was dieing down a second time. What the hell was going on?!

"Its going out again...." she chided, putting a hand on her hip.

"You aren't putting it out or something are you?" He chided back, loosening his reservations about pushing the gloves too far. The resonanations of the jewels on the backs of his gloves were becoming quite intense, and swirly moonlight like colors whirled about inside them in a myriad of glittering hues, as the fire returned to full heat again. Whatever was going on, the beach should be a glowing sea of magma under that much force.... yet he was barely boiling the sea water when it rolled in.

"Don't be rediculous!" She shided back, in a clearly obviously false sense of being offended. "Why would I do such a thing like that?" She cooed. "Honestly, what kind of wizard are you that you can't keep a little fire like this going? For shame!"

Wierd's left eye clamped shut even tighter, and his right one twitched. That was it... she wanted a fire... he'd give her a fire.... if it was gonna boil down to a competition of who's powers were stronger, he wasn't about to lose to such a challenge. Cold ocean spray and inclement weather be damned! He *was* gonna get that salt tonight!

The emblems he had painted on the sides of the gloves actually began to pulse with errie supernatural light themselves, but all he was really aware of now were the whisperings and singing voices of the dead drifting over from the afterlife, ringing, pounding, resounding, and drenching his very being to the very point where he couldn't take any more.

The bonfire raged up into the sky quite spectacularly, but well below what it should have been.

"Ooooooooooh." Chided Lana again. "Must have touched a nerve! That's REALLY impressive!"

"Glad you.. think so...." he whispered back, almost delerious. Plunging that deep into the power of death had certain.. side effects on how the physical body responded, and on the mental state of the user.

"But you might want to snap out of it, and come back down here to earth sometime soon?" She giggled.

"...why?..."

"Because I'm full, and if I quit, with you doing that, there might not be a beach left! Heeheee!"

That was true.... if she quit now... wait? "Full"?

That snapped him back, just as he felt the strange weakening of the spell he was turning vanish, causing the fire to turn into a pillar of fire that lept up into the sky, and lit the night for mere moments before he dropped it, leaving a twisted pile of melted green glass and very frosted salt on the beach.

"Oh good!" She said looking at the salt. "I thought it would all get vaporized or something..."

"What do you mean, FULL?!" He demanded.

Lana stretched out like a cat that had just lapped up a bowl of cream. "Hmmm... just that. Full."

Weird boggled at her, but matter of factly, she pointed down at the beach with he left hand.
"You'd better get that before the tide rolls in." She smiled.

Shooting her a look of displeasure and disapproval, he pried up the thick scale of blasted salt with bits of glass and sand intrusions, and walked away from the white sodium scorchmark surrounding it on the beach, before the next wave rolled in to wash it all away.

"Ok, now explain yourself." He demanded after joining her up away from where the waves hit the beach, amid the tangled seagrass and large pebbles.

"Well..." she began, obviously fishing for words, and obviously self concious about it. "You see .. I uhm..."

It was wierd's turn to look askance at her, with arms crossed, his own version of the hand on hip scowl women used.

"I eat magic." She finally blurted out. "And lifeforce, but I don't like to do that! Just magic."

He raised an eyebrow at her. He wanted to scold her so badly, but the again, he kinda understood why she had been so secretive, and broody lately. If she was.. hungry... being around potentially edible people, even her friends, would have been quite a temptation. But she could have been more open about her dietary needs, and not tried to totally snuff out his spell like that. He really had almost vaporized the beach.

His glare must have softened some, because she started to smile again. "You aren't mad at me, are you?" She asked timidly.

"Next time, try not to totally snuff out the spell you are munching on, when it's something I really need to succeed, ok?" He gruffed.

Her eyes sparkled in the moonlight as she put a hand to her mouth to hide her giggles.

"It wasn't very ladylike, was it?" She teased.

"No. It wasn't. Worse than Rikod at a beer drinking tournament."

"That's so mean!" She protested between fits of laughter. "I was just seeing what you could really do!"

He chewed his lip and raised an eyebrow at her cooly.
"I literally hit my limits doing that." He gruffed.

"And those hideously tattered little white gloves of yours didn't burn out either! That was really cool!"

"What was cool?" He he asked flatly.

"Oh come ON! That thing at the end?! WHOOSH! To think, I can usually paralyze anything magical for as long as I am feeding off it, but you managed to keep that silly little fire going despite my eating as fast as I could! Wow! I haven't eaten like that.... ever! It was amazing!"

"At least I got the salt I wanted." He gruffed again. "It's time we went back... I need to check on hugo."

"Are you really going to WALK back, the way you walked up here, with those little whirly lights again?"

"Yeah, why?" He demanded, amid her nearly hysterical giggles. He was thinking that absorbing all that magic had made her giddy like an elf head-dunked into a barrel or river spirits.

"Oh for goodness sake, here--" she said, reaching out for him.

"Hey, hold it a min--" he began to protest just as she put a hand on his shoulder.

It was like getting knocked in the back of the head, and suckerpunched in the gut at the same time, as all senses went dark, except for the concept of the passing of time, before exploding back into conciousness in a completely different place.

"-ute...."

"There, all better!" She said with a smile and a flourish. "Right back where we started."

Indeed, they were back at the moonlit entryway, just outside the big doubledoors of the fortress entry hall. He looked around, and saw Oliolli looking at the two of them with blinking boggled eyes.

"Don't ever do that again." He told her quickly, and under his breath, to which she started laughing. "I really need to go check on Hugo now." He said without missing a beat.

"There you go again, being a thick head. All work, and no play..."

"It's important."

"Oh, fine... fine.. some other time then, yes?"

"Maybe." He gruffed back, pushing the door open.

[WillowLuman]

[BTW, Wierd edited his short post into a story one. Just updating all your notifications.]

[Gizogin]

[Sorry I'm late, I was just brushing up on my medical practice.  There's this great (free) training program called "Surgeon Simulator 2013".  It's a fantastic educational tool.  I can't recommend it enough.  Who knew that it's entirely possible to survive with your entire chest open to the air (and I mean completely open; there's no muscle or skin left at all), or that lungs are entirely unnecessary?  Look up a gameplay video or two—you won't regret it.]

[Actually, even with Lana freed up, I have nothing to do until the morning.  Just as a note, I believe I mentioned that Lana can only teleport someone with their consent.  If not, then no matter.  Even if that's the case, it might be more like "consent is implied unless explicitly denied", meaning that Lana won't be able to teleport wierd from now on.  There might be some other rules-lawyering she could use to justify it as well.]

[Oh, and wierd, I have a feeling Lana's going to become a growing nuisance for you.  Not least because you're the best food source she has right now.  I'm sure you recognized this as a possibility.]

[wierd]

[I get the feeling, but I think I can twist that in his favor, by having it be "ok" for her to snuff out the spells he casts, by using her as a magic sparring partner.  It would give him much needed practice without his "crutches", though will probably have to keep them on to spar enough with her to keep her from going on a diet.  Unfortunately, she's insufferably bubbly/whimsical in her personality, at least as I percieve it. If they can arrive at a routine, it should be OK though.]

[WillowLuman]

[Should provide a better outlet than genocide, at least.]

[wierd]

[Weird only embarked down that line, because he felt there were no other options. Not because he likes murdering things. In fact, he prefers not to kill living things at all if he can avoid it, and then, prefers it to be quick and humane. ]