On the southwestern road out of Mothdale...
Sigmund is pleased to discover that he and the gub appear to be on the same page at last!
~That's definitely good to know! I honestly thought that you wanted us to stay in the city forever. I have to add that I'm glad to know that you are a cold-blooded mind, rather than the somewhat unexperienced and childish yet intelligent being that you seemed to be when I just met you. Your lack of care about us is completely explained now. Now I can work better knowing that it will be mutually beneficial for both of us.~
~we are glad that you have understood your grave misconceptions! and you must forgive our changing disposition! we have only been fully sentient for a week at most in total! but we are improving!~
Sigmund guesses that explains a few things, at least. He turns to his loyal compatriots Kevin and Mark, who seem quite unengaged in any complex braining, and instead seem to be proceeding along the road like a bunch of well-behaved fur traders.
"So, for what I could take from the memories of this body, we are a trio of musicians. That is good as a fake identity, but I don't have anything on myself right now, which makes me wonder what happened to my instruments," he says, and Mark doesn't turn to look at him while he speaks, probably because he doesn't actually need to in order to see him clearly.
"I don't have any instruments aside from this flute, and I don't think it's magic, here, take a look," Mark lies bold-facedly even though it's clearly apparent that he seems to be carrying three instruments in total and that all three of them seem to be glowing. Sigmund does notice that the glow lessens considerably when Mark hands him the flute, however.
"So, while you three are working your 'trio of musicians' thing, do I just hide in the bushes or something?" Art asks as Sigmund examines the flute and plays a short tune on it, successfully realizing that he can probably play it with a reasonable level of skill. He decides not to question Mark further, since it kind of freaks him out when he talks. Mark's not supposed to talk. It's totally a rule.
At any rate (but at a quick pace), they eventually walk the requisite distance to the fair town of Eckledun. Mark, for his part, spoke very little during most of the journey, though he did wander off the road for a few moments and then returned with what appeared to be a sharpened axe fashioned from animal bones, which would be all fine and good if bits of animal skin, muscle and tendon weren't still hanging off it in places.
The town of Eckledun, rather wonderfully, seems to be fairly sizable! Quite a bit larger than one would expect at this distance from a city like Mothdale, and it looks highly vibrant and busy, to be honest, though it is also apparent that many of the buildings seem very secured, and a lot of the structures incorporate much more steel into them than one typically sees in your average seaside town. A lot of the taller buildings seem to have an outer frame made purely of steel. Or at least the travelers suppose it's steel - could be any other similar-looking metal, really, but it hardly matters. Most of the windows are barred as well.
Finally, even before the gang get inside the town itself, they notice a rather sizable bunch of camps some distance outside of it - surrounding it, in fact. A lot of the people there look somewhat distressed.
At the Red Tower of Power...
Niklas believes that this may be the beginning of a beautiful friendship as he regards the corpulent little lifemage in front of him.
"Good enough for me!" he says to the intriguing possibility of there being lizards deep down below, and heads down with the kid to find the mystical treasure of the great god Patricia or whatever. The downward journey is long and arduous, especially for one as hungry as Niklas. But the will of Patricia is not to be defied, and they reach the basement eventually! They find it to be rather dark and expansive, with irregularly-shaped hallways leading every which way. Only some of them may contain magical lizards, Niklas suspects.
"I think one of these passages has many spiders in it. Many, many spiders! I hope, at least! I put two there a year ago! Boy, were they big then."
In the streets of Mothdale...
"Then I apologise Gub, you just seem the type that would enjoy efficiency and not having to rely on loose contingency. Anyway, Morton, we should be off. If the others had the same thoughts as I, we may not need kind words... but a spade," Scott ominously remarks as Morton seeks further clarification.
"I... No, I'm quite afraid I didn't know. What exactly do you mean, good mage Justine? Are they to 'merge' with good group Gub, cooperate, or..." he trails off, somewhat unclear on the business the gub tend to perpetrate.
"I mean that they will become part of the gub, probably irreversibly. Merge with their collective mind, like we did for those three days we blanked out. They'll lose all individuality and independent thought, pretty much. And I wonder if you're going to include that important fact in the sales pitch, Morton. Or did you somehow not guess that this is what the gub do yet?"
~that's a very negative way to put it, justine! while it is true that the gub make all decisions as a single entity, the individual identities of its constituents live on forever! even when the body itself perishes!~
Scott is a bit disappointed that nobody seems to presently be going anywhere.
Author
Topic: Life Begins At Death - Epilogue: We Live And Live Again (Read 564691 times)