Dave, fresh out of fucks to give, figures this is as good a time as any to try out his chimney enraging spell to see if it's worth keeping, facing the towering structures and attempting to infuse them with the essence of pure hatred, anger and a few other things.
[Dave's affinity roll: 2-1+
1]
Sadly, the chimneys are well-versed in the ways of provocation, and fail to rise to Dave's ridiculously obvious baiting, thus proving themselves to be the better man from the get go, at least to themselves. Dave, naturally, is having none of it and tries to refine his approach, switching to inappropriate comments about the chimneys' parentage.
[Dave's affinity roll: 5-1+1]
His clown gets into that particular spirit with remarkable ease, utilizing its happy-go-lucky facade to perform a terrifying sneak attack laden with insults so ear-withering that Dave becomes increasingly glad with each second that he was only partially privy to the terrifying thought processes that must have gone into their concoction a few moments previously. He wonders if his clown would kiss its mother with that mouth, to be honest. It seems to be working excellently, though, with the clown's words attaining a most disturbing character, shifting out of the limited language of all mortals to explore the intricacies of eldritch tongues that only chimneys could possibly understand. When the clown starts to foam at the mouth and its words slowly pass beyond Dave's audible frequency range, the chimneys seem to have had enough! Their smoke, already having intensified in the past few moments, begins to billow out in massive quantities as they begin to swing around wildly, looking for something,
anything to take out their rage on. Flapping this way and that, Dave notices one of the larger chimneys plow through a flock of black, shapeless creatures, causing several to drop out of the air, softly collapsing into clouds of black dust as they hit the ground. One of the chimneys, driven to intense, animalistic acts of violence by the barrage of unintelligible words, starts to flip out, slamming into a few of its nearby companions before said companions, almost equally enraged, all simultaneously push back, toppling the poor fixture and causing it to fall and smash into pieces against the black ground.
The underwear animals all around him take note of this development, and swiftly begin to retreat from the area, much to the displeasure of a particular figure, a large, flapping pair of pink and red bloomers with little black fuzzy tentacles protruding from its surface currently flying about, waving what looks like a very strange fibrous staff at the various livestock.
"Calm yourselves, beasts! Get back into formation!" it shouts in a very shocked tone, circling around the animals and trying to funnel them into a single direction.
* * * * *
John tries to defuse the admittedly volatile situation to the best of his ability.
"Oh my, this can only go well. YO, TREY, DON'T RUN. THIS GUY DOESN'T SEEM LIKE IT, BUT HE ONLY HAS YOUR BEST INTEREST IN MIND. TRUST ME!" he shouts in his Brazilian plumber voice, which gives Trey a moment's pause, enough for the mancow to get a word in edgewise.
"CEASE YOUR EVASIVE DANCING, WHELP! IT WILL NOT SAVE YOUR CRAVEN SOUL!" it screams at Trey, its laborer's shade flying off as its horns suddenly grow and branch out, its jaws expand and its throat swells, its head all the while retaining the general shape of a cow's, or perhaps a moose's? The boundaries are slightly bleeding together.
"WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?" Trey screams back, his eyes darting to John, who can only offer a weak shrug as the mancow rips off its robe, revealing a rather ripped, vaguely humanoid body with six additional arms, smaller than its original pair, folding out from various unpredictable, asymmetrical locations, and a large, pulsing udder bulging on the lower part of its abdomen. John is struck by the idea that he may have been using the wrong gender pronoun for this creature all along immediately after his mind begins to process all this.
"Your reckoning is at hand, foul terror of the mortal world!" the cow says, its voice amplified fivefold by the transformation it appears to be undergoing. A koala in the tree next to the visibly shaken Trey begins to shriek, provoking John's interest. What's that doing here?
[Trey's affinity roll: 2]
Trey tries to respond with a spell, but the cow begins to cackle wildly, the almost bare ground of the park beginning to twist and bubble, the air growing increasingly moist, a black fog beginning to rise from the ground. John finds all this very impressive, obviously, but he can't help feeling a little strange when the fog begins to adhere to his body, crawling up his clothes and sucking up all the heat from his body as it does so.
"What the fuck do you-" Trey half-yelps out as the fog begins to visibly pull at him. He responds by forcefully ripping out of it and climbing up the tree, whereupon he begins to make his way to the top branch. John stares at the way the teenager scrambles up the branches with quite a bit of ease, leaving a whole lot of yellowish handprints on the bark, and also at the manner in which the cow simply strides up to the tree and touches it with a single hooflike finger. The tree, much to the displeasure of Trey and the koala right next to him on the treetop, begins to bend and tie itself into knots, quite the impressive sight. And as John wonders whether he should do something about all this, he suddenly realizes that he can taste something rather awful. Looking down, he notices that the fog seems to have reached his mouth. And as he begins to struggle, the whole substance exerts a powerful pull, and John disappears into the ground, deprived of a resolution to the situation he was so keenly observing moments ago, his ears filling with a female voice screaming monotonously, interrupted by disjointed pauses every few moments as everything goes black.
A few minutes pass, the screaming pausing noticeably for about half a minute somewhere along the middle of that time period, and John feels something finally take shape beneath him - ground! Very smooth ground, in fact, judging from the way his feet seem to be sliding on it as he tries to adjust his posture. The next thing he becomes aware of is a set of chairs, and then quite a few people in them as well. Well, "people" might be stretching it a little, to be honest. Mostly they seem to be cowmen. They look to be very similar in build and dress to the cowman John has already met, and each one seemed to be staring upward. As John contemplates looking up, he notices Trey materialize on a chair to his right, and a koala to his left.
"... what just happened there?" Trey asks, evidently still processing the events of the previous moments.
"Where are we?"The koala responds with a tiny, dissatisfied sound, and Trey's eyes widen.
"Well. That's... good to know," he says, before turning his head to the left and noticing John, much to his surprise.
"Wait, you're here too? What the hell?"* * * * *
THE DUNKER is pleased by the way the donut shops around these parts appear to have adopted standard dealer practices. It's high time the business evolved in this direction, given how what they're selling is basically some of the purest dopamine rushes you can legally get, at least for men of his caliber and distinction.
"Sure, why not," he says, and enacts his standard strategy, which is to shove as many donuts down his own throat as he possibly can, biting each donut in half two to three times before swallowing, which his well-trained esophagus musculature is perfectly capable of handling with only a modicum of indigestion. As THE DUNKER eats, the girl claps her hands together, rubbing the palms against one another excitedly. THE DUNKER wonders why that might be for a few moments before the taste of the donuts, well masked by the man's eating habits up to this point, hit him as his esophagus starts to back up with delicious half-chewed pastries. And when that happens, he is suddenly launched into heaven. Rather literally, in fact, in that his surroundings melt away around him, giving way to an interesting sort of darkness.
[THE DUNKER's mind roll: 4]
The darkness, not content to be merely enjoyed by a mortal, immediately parts as a small, pinkish ray of light shines at THE DUNKER, who, having seen movies about this sort of thing, immediately twists out of the way rather than risk laser-assisted dismemberment. When a second, greenish ray tries the same thing, the man is equally prepared, and dodges that as well, putting himself in an awkward position that lasts for but a moment before the quickest, largest beam of all, bright red in color, puts a stop to his wacky cat burglar hijinks by shining through his hand, and, oddly enough, refracts visibly, shining right into his eyes and filling the poor fellow with thoughts and ideas he had scarcely considered before, such as three-story bagel sandwiches and black, forbidden arts of magic!
1. Annihilate Grandparent
2. Wall of Scandalous Lottery Tickets
Hah! It worked! Pick a spell, fatty. Time to have some fun.
* * * * *
Halesey, suddenly struck by the idea that maybe standing smack-dab in the middle of a cocaine blizzard is not exactly the soundest of strategies, prepares to fling himself out of the danger zone.
"Harglebargle! Grnnfff! Potatnggggle! Fnffff! Vort-arggggh!" he growls and sputters, then starts making his way outward, getting clear of the alley and out of the way of the nasty cocaine draft, feeling incredibly relieved when he inhales and doesn't receive a most inadvisable dose of opiates straight to the bloodstream.
He is less pleased to discover that
Larry isn't out yet, and that his hands appear... abnormal, to say the least, which he can tell even with his slightly impaired sight, with tiny folds of skin distending from his numb hands in a manner resembling little tentacles that appear to be moving of their own volition.
Author
Topic: The Forgotten Art: Approaching the Nexus (Read 272080 times)