In Helsvar's village...
Niklas laughs (or at least chitters) maniacally and begins to wander aimlessly. He soon finds a mighty spruce man blocking his path, bristling with spruce cones and sharp green needles.
"You there!" it bellows at Niklas. "Are you the Chosen Rodent?"
At the site of Niklas' melting...
Emotions are in full swing as the unsettled Kevin and the more calm Morton instruct Erin.
"That's what I fucking said. Make him into a goddamn ball and roll him away before the guards come to beat us up even more!"
"Now now, good jester Kevin, there's no need to get angry. I know the situation is dire, but we must keep our heads as best we can. I'm afraid that I'm not sure how well turning chef Niklas into a ball will help in getting him away from the heat, I'm not sure the floor is tilted enough to generate enough movement, nor how we could perhaps control his movement afterwards. I can only imagine that he must be hot enough that if we were to touch him, we may combust. I have a pot that may contain him, however," Morton mediates, hoping to prevent things from getting out of hand. "If we must get good sir Captain, we must hurry as fast as we can. I fear we shouldn't take anymore time, a spectacle is being made of the scene now and I fear that will not abate given a few minutes. But perhaps there is merit in what good jester Kevin says, can you perhaps shape chef Niklas into a ball and give the ground under him direction? Just enough to get him going, then perhaps I can scoop him into my the pot and we can leave the rest to be done on the ship," he continues, showing off his sweet pot to his companions. "If not, then we must hurry to go get captain before any more time passes."
"We just need to hurry up or those chucklefucks that call themselves guards are going to cut off a few more limbs of each of us, and I think Erin won't endure it as well as we do."
"I guess I can try that, yeah. Less complex than makin' brains, that's for sure."
She turns once again to the pile of molten metal and concentrates. The slag bubbles for a moment, then shrinks, reshaping itself into a red-hot solid sphere about the size of a human torso.
"Okay, and now the next step..."
She squints her eyes a little, but nothing else of note happens.
"Semi-molten rock's pretty difficult to work with. Not sure exactly what it's made of - stone is real variable that way. But maybe..."
Suddenly, a large chunk of the sphere that is the chef's current form just up and disappears, like something just took a large bite out of it, giving the thing a look that resembles the crescent moon just a little.
"Whoops. Didn't mean for that to happen. I get real erratic in the mornings, sorry."
On the deck of the Second Shank...
Sigmund is put off by this new information. What could it mean?
"Really? So, how is that for you? Because that's the way I felt everything. It was even related to the rearranging of the harmonies of the existence, that were the rules, and the cascade event was the progressive rearranging of less important rules to more important ones."
"Classic effort of will, helped by chants and a reasonably good approximation of what I wanted my focus to do - same as how it is for most people that know what they're doing. Didn't have anything to do with outright rules or anything - haven't even heard of such a thing."
"It reminds me of something, actually. Did you happen to see any rules for souls?"
Scott, meanwhile, tries to do a favor to the fabric of society and goes to smack his head against a wall.
[Scott's endurance roll: 1]
It turns out that bashing your broken skull against a wall isn't actually a good idea! Who knew? Certainly not Scott, whose brain is now more exposed and filled with jagged skull fragments than ever.
[Scott's will roll: 4]
He doesn't particularly mind, though. He doesn't even remember what exactly it was he did, which is all you can really ask for in cases of severe brain trauma. He just goes to look for whatsherface instead rather than dwell on the unsettlingly soft and fragmentary nature of his skull. It takes him a while, but he believes he's found her - her hair is really messy and a different color than he remembers, not to mention she's lost a bit of weight, but Scott stands by his results. He blocks her way as she tries to make her way to do something doubtlessly bereft of any importance to anyone.
"Would you kindly move out of the way? I am sure you have something to say that you believe is important, but I have business to conduct," she says to Scott, giving him a hard, unblinking look right in the eyes.
In Undefined Space...
"Ooh! Dat smells nice!" Timothy remarks upon the portal. However, a measure of distrust creeps into his mind. Sure, it smells real nice and looks real nice, but how can he be sure that it's not actually a horrible trap executed by horrible people? Clearly, he needs counsel.
After straining his mind for a couple of moments and finding telepathy a terribly elusive prospect, he turns to his people skills instead, looking Og and the mask-thing over cautiously. He supposes they seem okay. Not very evil at all. So he supposes he can trust them. And the portal does smell nice. Nothing to it, then! Into the portal he goes, diving headfirst into fresh, new adventure. There is a moment where he feels turned inside-out, but it quickly subsides as he looks around. This place looks like a sort of idealized version of the mortal world - a sort of small, idyllic village, except it feels more... saturated. The colors are brighter, the smells are nicer, the sun itself seems to shine at him more pleasantly, and the birds chirp wonderfully enough that an inattentive enough listener might in fact confuse the noise for actual music. It reminds Timothy of something, but he can't quite pinpoint what that might be.
This is mostly because, before he can process the whole thing fully, a creature appears next to him suddenly and without warning - a rather androgynous thing, tall and dressed impeccably, with golden hair and a bright smile. It looks at him joyfully, and suddenly Timothy is surrounded by a crowd of beautiful, yet somehow... unusual men and women, who regard him with no small measure of amusement.
"HELLO, MORTAL!" the voice of the creature booms at him. "WELCOME TO THE REALM OF LOVE! I GET THE FEELING THAT YOU AND I WILL BE THE BEST OF... HM. YOU SEEM TO BE CHAINED TO A DEAD MAN, SIR! ARE YOU AWARE OF THIS?" the creature begins, then suddenly takes on a less official tone, looking at Timothy skeptically.
Author
Topic: Life Begins At Death - Epilogue: We Live And Live Again (Read 563942 times)