In an endless alleyway...
Morton and Mark snap into action, grabbing at Wilma and trying their best to prevent her consumption by this malevolent wall thing. They pull, Mark huffs, Morton puffs (mostly for solidarity's sake), and they start to make a little progress, the arm of the mage inching out of the wall quite slowly.
However, upon reaching a certain point, the arm refuses to budge any further. Wilma, quite optimistic at first, makes a very nervous sounding "uh", and the other two pause for a moment to assess their progress. Wilma's partially out of the wall, and doesn't appear to be getting pulled in any further, but still stuck inside up to her bicep.
"This... feels very uncomfortable," she says. "I can't feel my fingers anymore. Or my hand."
Outside the ruins of Eckledun...
Sigmund, forgetting for a moment that his anti-magic pebble is anti-magic, and also that he doesn't know where it is, tries to move it further into town nevertheless, just sort of blindly poking with his sphere.
[Sigmund's magic roll: 3]
He manages to unsettle a wall a little, though not particularly so. He supposes the pebble's not in the vicinity of it, which is probably a little bit of progress made on solving his problem.
Slightly above most of Eckledun...
Scott gives up immediately on extracting anything at all useful from this fellow.
"I hope you enjoy Shashlik, my friend. Pray we do not meet again," he says, flicking his immense flatness at the twitching body.
[Firestarting roll: 4]
The mage catches on fire, intensifying the hiss coming out of him. His arms start to flail wildly, and his head bends at angles most unnatural. Mildly entertained by the spirited reaction, Scott moves on, looking for something more to his liking, such as his nicest old friend. Descending a little lower, he starts to scan the streets once more. Doesn't look like Morton's anywhere to be seen, however, though there's a weird pink swimming pool that catches Scott's visual centers. Floating ever lower, he takes in its shape - rectangular, about the shape of a courtyard, with wooden-looking lily pads floating on its homogenously pink surface. They look kind of like sunken tables. Maybe they're alive. Or used to be alive, not that Scott'd be able to tell. They'd know where Morton is for sure if they were.
On a road to somewhere, one would hope...
Kevin, enticed by promises of power, surrenders the axe as well, leaving himself naked and weaponless in the damn woods, which doesn't exactly seem like a safe proposition. Patty seems incredibly satisfied, however, wrapping the scroll and the axe in the dress, and holding it in both of her arms promisingly. The impromptu satchel starts to glow as her eyes run over it, her face the very picture of intensity.
"This will work perfectly..." she says, her voice trailing off. Sucking air as her strength momentarily leaves her, she falls on her knees, plopping down on the soft, muddy road. The glow intensifies over the next few seconds, the dress glowing very brightly and giving off a little bit of white smoke. Patty opens her mouth and inhales, and an ecstatic thrill fills her. Her mouth opens, and a single, perfect, musical sound issues forth, the dress and the axe bursting into a blinding flame, burning up in a few seconds, leaving no ash whatsoever. The scroll they were wrapped with, however, remains. Patty hobbles to her feet and pushes it into Kevin's hands, and he nearly drops it due to its incredible temperature, though that subsides momentarily.
"The Mantra is yours now! Read it," she says, and Kevin sneaks a peek at the contents of the thing, which now look quite understandable, if still somehow completely undefined. "Chant its words and focus your desires, and everything can potentially be yours!"
In the home of Karina...
Darren does not fully understand the question. Must be one of those paranoid trick questions.
"Of course I am who I was, and I am who I am. Wait. What do you mean?"
Karina tilts her head and leans forward, looking distressed.
"I... you seem different, I don't know! And I... I'm not sure. I feel strange. I..."
Karina goes quiet, and Darren becomes aware of a certain line on her forehead, noteworthy because it appears to be vertical rather than horizontal. Was that there a moment ago?
"It... feels so odd."
Karine pokes at the line, and her ectoplasmic flesh stirs a little in the area. The crease looks wider the next moment, longer, then it starts to protrude, forming an odd ridge as her fingers run over it and her eyes widen in shock. Darren is transfixed as he stares at the formation of undoubtedly something, and is only snapped out of it when the ridge runs down Karina's entire face, and chooses that exact moment to bulge outward with a sickening crack, eliciting a pained shriek from the woman that cuts off as her jaw, and the rest of her face as well, starts to peel aside, the edges rolling up as they retreat to reveal a chittering blackness beneath. What looks like a malformed ant skips over the edge every now and then, dropping off Karina's body and floating off into the distance, almost but not entirely indistinguishable from a mote of dust.
Karina, it should be noted, still seems quite conscious - her hands frantically try to close up her opening face. Darren gets the feeling that she'd be making quite a lot of noise right now if she could - the opening now seems to be going down to her throat, and it almost looks as though the woman is entirely hollow inside - if the ant-filled cavity goes down, and Darren suspects it might, he couldn't rightly say he knows how much further.
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Topic: Life Begins At Death - Epilogue: We Live And Live Again (Read 556770 times)