In an administrative building of some kind...
Timothy, despite all these dire warnings from Lenny, tries to remain optimistic. His can-do attitude is, after all, what's gotten him this far!
"Aw, dun' worries, I's real good with dis sorta stuff! 'Sides, if I not maps this an-molly business, how's I gets back home an' finds me friends? I gots to do what I gots to do, right?" he says, trying to infect Lenny with a heaping helping of happy thoughts while grinning manically. Lenny sighs.
"See, you're not getting what I'm saying here - I don't think it's even possible to map out one of those things. It's all an infectious mess of shifting, broken space and time. That's why we try to keep any and all of it out of here - the pink is like a plague. It spreads and it twists things, that's why keeping it in check is essential. Otherwise it's like a domino effect. And even if you come back from the anomaly, odds are you won't be the same as you were before. So think real hard before going, man. Even floating all the way in the direction you want would be a better, if slower idea. But if you really want to go, well... good luck, you'll need it more than ever in your life." he tells Timothy slowly and patiently.
In a soft room...
Sigmund, ignorant of the basic precepts of politeness when in another's abode (or at least another's prisoner holding area), begins to tear at the wall.
[Strength roll: 6+1]
He rips off a good chunk of the stuff - some kind of weird, organic upholstery from the feel of it, with solid brick stretching out beneath it, and then, figuring he's got time and upper body strength to spare, begins to tear off more and more, finding a perverse, childlike pleasure in ruining the wall covering as much as possible, creating a large pile of the stuff that he, after a moment's thought, decides to wallow in for a minute or so, realizing that this is probably the happiest he's felt in weeks, which promptly depresses him slightly.
Now, with all the requisite fun of the day had, it's time for business. He begins to look for a way out, but is suddenly interrupted by something. A noise. He turns around to face it out of reflex, but, rather predictably, sees nothing. What a useless reflex that was, he thinks as forces unseen descend upon him.
[Grab: Gnome 1 vs. Sigmund: 2+1+1 vs. 2]
[Grab: Gnome 2 vs. Sigmund: 6+1+1 vs. 6]
What is rather obviously a set of two gnomes, though the pairs of arms involved are four, one pair for each of Sigmund's limbs, seizes the poor fellow without much issue. The claws of the creatures feel distinctly different this time - for one, they are much sharper. And they feel rather weird in shape at that. The two creatures begin to carry Sigmund off, the large metal door opening very noisily as he is carried through, then closing behind him. Curiously, there is absolutely no sound made by either his carriers or any other gnomes in the vicinity. No clicking, no clacking. Nothing at all.
Expediently, Sigmund is carried over to a table of some sort - his hands are quickly secured with metal shackles, as are his feet, his body locked in a spread-eagle position. A few moments pass, and he senses the two carrier gnomes quickly retreat from the shifting of the air, though he's not entirely sure why. The whole thing, however, fills him with a sense of great foreboding. As well as seems unpleasantly familiar.
In a large pipe of some kind...
Kevin quickly checks if there's any way upwards, leaping to find an edge of some kind - however, it seems he fell down a rather tall shaft, and the wall of it appears to be quite smooth. So he opts to go upstream instead, finding that the pipe takes him that way for quite a distance - it branches in a great many directions, all the while narrowing as he goes on. There seem to be similar upward shafts along the way, and soon the jester has ascertained several things.
For one, there is one particular pipe that appears to have ruptured a little - there is a hole along the top of it, and it seems to have been pushed open after being slashed in many places, as a cursory feel of the thing reveals. Secondly, there is also an upward shaft that is in a poorer state of repair than the other ones, as well as narrower - with some strength and persistence, Kevin could try to climb it. And thirdly, there's a wealth of as of yet unexplored pipes stretching off in several directions, if Kevin's sense of touch isn't failing him, though they are narrowing as they go by, requiring that he drop to a crawl to explore. Plus they smell a bit suspicious.
In the presence of a black-clad bard...
Morton, though a bit put off by the way the flower in his hand has been made the way it is by unholy bodily fluids, tries to be polite and merely places it on his surface at a respectable distance from Scott.
"I apologize for your loss, good sir, indeed my condolences. There are many ways to take the passing of a loved one, few without pain," he says sadly. "Is this Emily perhaps a second chancer? One we could-" he begins to add, but is interrupted by Scott, who abruptly stops bleeping.
"Are you personally acquainted with the Mages of the Black Circle?" the beeping ghost asks with great gravity of the bard, who seems taken aback.
"Well, of course, how else would-"
"BEEEEEEP!" Scott interrupts the man, but flames fail to materialize as per his plan. The bard is visibly disturbed.
"Um, not that I'm questioning the procedure here, but-"
"BEEEEEEEEP!" Scott cuts him off again, louder this time.
"Would you stop th-"
"BEEEEEEEEEEP!" Scott's voice reaches a shrill peak, and he wonders if volume is the main issue here. Maybe making a different sound would do the trick?
"Look, I know you're the Incarnation of Senselessness, but would you please stop that? I'm trying to be serious here, man," the bard says. "Now. Emily. She needs a second chance at this, like you said. I've done the ritual as detailed, and, if you don't mind, I'd like you people to take this as seriously as me. I've come a long way to get here, and I am prepared to go further still. Do you need proof of my devotion? The urgency of my need? Because I can give plenty of that if you want."
In the court of King Fintel...
Niklas, never a big fan of speaking appropriately in quotes to make it clear when he's actually talking and when he isn't, because normally the assumption would go that he is, being a Northerner of plain words and immediately vocalized thoughts, wastes a whole five seconds pointing out (also mutely) that his current exasperation with diplomacy as a concept and his general culturally ingrained social phobias typically disguised by his equally ingrained propensity toward quick solutions to conversation like violence and terrifying, attention-absorbing food, that all of the discomfort caused by the unfamiliar situation he now finds himself in, which is to say being in front of a man who he cannot mouth off to in good conscience and cannot offer awful food to, shall remain unvocalized physically despite his mind being afire with thoughts of how diplomacy is something one can totally avoid with the much more sensible option of violence, and thus unnecessary to any who roughly fit his perverted idea of the masculine ideal, himself included despite technically being a woman right now.
"No comment required. Numbers may escort us to our quarters," he says to the king after an awkward pause.
"You heard the woman, Numbers. Show them to their room," the king says, grinning. Numbers sighs, and moves as commanded, taking the two visitors out into the hallway after murmuring a weak assent.
"Your rooms should be somewhere on the... guest wing," he mumbles as they walk through the hallways, entering a somewhat well-furnished area - the guest wing, it seems, with a whole six rooms. The place is quite silent, and no activity in the castle itself can be heard. As they regard the hallway, Numbers stops.
"This is the guest wing. You can take one room each if you want, nobody's here anyway, I think..." their guide says rather absently. Looking at him, Niklas begins to feel a tad odd. There's something... intriguing about Numbers, he can't help but think, though he's not sure why. Seems like a fairly sorry sort of guy, though he is kind of handsome, he notes.
In the Temple of Automaton Worship...
Darren guesses he can play another game. After business is concluded, obviously.
"I don't mind at all. But, may I go to get the artifact first?"
"You mean the crown's replica? Sure. I do not really need it, to be honest," the statue says.
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Topic: Life Begins At Death - Epilogue: We Live And Live Again (Read 564166 times)