In the wilderness outside Eckledun...Sigmund beckons his sphere to come, and it ponderously sails back to him. It feels much safer to have it near. Now it's time for the second try. He approaches a less evil tree and attempts to climb.
[Sigmund's climbing roll: 6-
1]
His phylactery ascending with him, Sigmund makes his way up the tree with altogether less issue than previously. The top offers him a very nice view, he thinks. There's forest all around. Most of the other trees are taller than this one. The sky's easy to see, though, and Sigmund thinks he does see smoke. Probably the habitation-related kind of smoke rather than the forest fire-related kind of smoke, though he's certainly no expert.
At a river crossing outside Rugish...Kevin scouts about for some wood to help him get across this river - he has reason to suspect drowning may severely affect him now, considering he seems to be alive and all. Unfortunately for him, though, the people of Rugish clearly believe in beautifying their surroundings the old-fashioned way - all stray pieces of wood have been removed from the area, and the only tree Kevin sees in a two hundred meter radius is on the opposite side of the river.
Of course, there's plenty of houses about, but they seem to be either using their visible wood for walls or firewood. One of them might be effective, and one of them is easily obtainable, and the two qualities do not overlap, which is most regrettable.
In the chambers of King Fintel of the Fifty Fiefs of Farning-Fenton...Niklas, faced with power almost beyond comprehension, grabs for more. His mind reaches forth and grabs for magic, all magic - from the unimaginable powers of demonkind to the simple tricks of the consummate entertainer to the subtle, incredibly tedious arts of the average enchanter. Scooping knowledge from all possible sources, he processes the knowledge - his mind envelops it like a great stomach, crystallizing, homogenizing the truth into a coherent bundle of secrets, a knot of extraordinary implications layered among one another. It tantalizes him to even look upon it - it takes the form of a fractal haze of green ice, ready to melt into his mind in one great wave of power.
His mouth, unstopped while his mind works, relays the knowledge he already has - that of the Artiste, what little Niklas truly recalls at the moment, being easily distracted at the best of times. His story is fractured and filled with asides on chairs and bloody-minded hostility, as all good stories must be.
"... hm, quite fascinating..." the king mutters, though whether it is at his story or at the innermost secrets of magic, which he appears to be staring at right now.
Niklas, almost as an afterthought, quickly scoops up the secrets of the culinary arts as well, arranging them into an elliptically orbiting body of deepest blue unknown in respect to the green haze. The arrangement has a sense of completeness, he thinks. There is nothing to add, and nothing to take away. He needs but reach out and absorb it.
"An interesting thing you've built," the king comments.
"What do you plan to do with it?"Deep, deep underground...Scott has made the realization that all men must ultimately come to - the true obstacle to his ambitions of freedom, agency and power is that the person having them is Scott. This is an issue that must be fixed at the bottom floor, the rest of his fractured mental pyramid be damned.
[Will roll: 4]
It takes but a light tap, it turns out, and Scott is only minutely scrambled for a few moments before he manages to perfectly adapt. Now he's a self-made lunatic, which he supposes will have to do. Now, the question is, how does having so many pieces of his psyche so readily smashed help him at all?
It doesn't, and it takes him but a few moments to realize this. What he's missing is a two-dimensional vector from his body, as evident from something about him feeling distinctly one-dimensional, which with Scott's knowledge of subtraction makes perfect sense. What he needs, then, is to devise a method to find a two-dimensional object in ostensibly three-dimensional space before this sudden misplaced vector business becomes a problem.
This sudden shock of insight, naturally, lends credence to the idea that mentally breaking his psyche more than usual may have in fact been an oddly therapeutic thing for Scott. Perhaps it would be a good idea to try it more often.
At the gateway to absolute nothing...Morton and
Mark, bedazzled and befuddled by this terribly inconvenient cessation of existence that their escape route appears to have caught a case of, come to a singular agreement.
It's time for a tea break. Everybody gets tea. Blissfully forgettable conversation is made. Mark attempts charades, but it avails the group nothing. Mr. T vibrates. Wilma advocates moving away from the brink of nonexistence. Mark and Morton, on grounds that it seems to be perfectly harmless at the moment, don't see the need to do so just yet. Mr. T suddenly flips into a mirror image of himself, looking an entirely different man now. The difference, while truthfully minute, is staggeringly apparent. This manages to distract the group from any fleeting intent of productivity for the rest of the tea break.
As they finish their respective bits of tea, no progress has been made. But no regress has been made either, Morton points out, so it's all good. Probably. Unless something is tracking them through the city with evil intent. Wilma ventures that this may in fact be so. Mr. T appears to agree, as he vibrates again. Looking back at where they came from, Mark and Morton become aware of something coming their way. It seems akin to a wave. A wave of pink spikes erupting from the ground at odd angles. Slightly reminiscent of that thing Morton observed crossing the intersection earlier, but distinctly more malevolent and focused. Probably entirely incidental to the discussion. Also slightly far away. Thank goodness for long streets.
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Topic: Life Begins At Death - Epilogue: We Live And Live Again (Read 561983 times)