Dave, now prepared for the coming apocalypse, gives the Denture God the go-ahead to break out already.
"Yeah, sure."It is less than dramatic, needless to say. But it seems the Denture God does not seem to mind overmuch.
"Well, okay. Watch your head."And in the endless darkness beneath him, a clack is emitted, massive beyond belief to the point where it shakes the very mold around Dave. It is followed by a chorus of smaller clacks, and then by a grand grinding, then a sudden, explosive expansion that blasts, well, everything away - dim, pinkish light slips in through the cracks as Dave blasts off, along with vast pieces of land, though he seems to be rather unharmed in the process. He can observe other pieces of his own planet fly off with him - a section of chimneys and hogweed rooted into mold, a castle of some sort, a few panicking underwear herders on some fragments - nobody appears to be dying, oddly enough. Even the fungal shapeshifters Dave can see are still shifting and twitching in the air as the Denture God breaks free. And as he flies away, he beholds the entity upon which he built the planet.
It's a little odd, goes without saying. A morass of swirling rows of false teeth, interconnecting in a web of dentures of many varying sizes and origins - not just human teeth are present, either, but prosthetic mastication and incision organs of a wide variety of creatures, some of them possibly not even found on Earth. It looks sort of like somebody took the concept of your average Azathoth lookalike, then replaced tentacles with gum and tooth rows, with several additional tooth-related features. Though at the center of it, Dave does notice, very dimly, a silhouette of some kind - humanoid, recognizable.
The shards of Dave's planet seem to reach an apex as their flight slows down, possibly due to air resistance, but they do not begin to fall down afterward. Instead, they simply stick around at a certain distance from the Denture God, forming an outer, permeable shell of slowly orbiting mold. Dave seems to be on one of the innermost fragments of mold right now, he notes.
"Well, that wasn't so bad, I guess. Didn't seem to kill anyone," the Denture God says, sounding a little fresher and energetic than previously.
"So, Dave, you seem like you'd have an idea, so tell me - what'd I miss? What's going on? Where'd that planet come from, exactly? And what's up with the pig-leg?"* * * * *
John, James and Menkau, after making sure nobody's definitely following them, venture deeper inside the ruins of central Lower Esplanade. The trek is rather uneventful, though they do notice and seemingly are noticed by a beaver or two hiding out in the ruins, looking for places to dam from the looks of it. One in particular flees at the sight of Menkau, running straight through a nearby wall with no trouble at all, causing an already partially collapsed building fall apart entirely.
Eventually, the group manage to reach a manhole, despite both John and James hoping that Menkau might have been mistaken and meant a storm drain instead. But alas, into the sewage it is, apparently. The three people manage to get the cover off with some doing, and John is the first to descend, only to find out several things quite quickly.
Firstly, sewer tunnels are really goddamn small. John thinks he'd need to crawl to get anywhere in there. He can only think this because he can't exactly confirm it except by touch, since even with the manhole open and the streetlights partly shining into the sewer it's still mostly pitch black down there, which is the second thing he notices. And the third thing, which he only becomes aware of once he gets to the bottom, is that not only does the sewer smell quite a lot like you'd expect sewage to smell like, and that not only are there... things floating down there, there's the matter of it becoming a little hard to breathe down there, and John doesn't really harbor many illusions for the tunnels themselves, especially, since he'd need to get on his hands and knees to explore in there.
On the bright side, he thinks he does sort of sense something down the sewer tunnel - it's some distance away, but he does sense it - it's definitely a leyline. He couldn't sense a thing from above ground, not that he's an expert or anything, but down here it's easier to do that, even if it's more difficult to do everything else.
* * * * *
The many
Larries all unify in their desire to go home now, and head back home - a couple immediately go to bed, and the rest get there in about two to three hours, though one Larry is suspiciously lost contact with, and the rest of the Larries have vivid nightmares - the same nightmare, in fact - afterwards. But they all - or rather, the only Larry currently extant, now that the water's effects have fully subsided - wake up in the next morning, rather happy that what they experienced seems to have just been a crazy dream of some kind.
Now it is a new day! And he's got eldritch beings to hunt!
* * * * *
The grand group of
Eta, Ivette,
THE DUNKER, Joanie, Shauna, Raven and Nigel head out of the bar after everyone except Joanie pays for what they've drunk. Together, they head out into the street, chatting along the way about a variety of subjects.
"So, um, I wanted to ask, are you all, like, witches? Or is it wizards?" Ivette asks at one point, about thirty minutes into the walk.
"Hell yeah, we're all wizards! Wizards and proud!" Joanie shouts as they proceed along the darkened areas of Jew Street.
"Uh, Joanie, maybe we shouldn't, like, flaunt it, you know?" Raven says unsurely, glancing about.
"Screw the haters! We're gods among people, I tell you. Ain't nobody in this world who can stop us, nobody!""Not before it's too late," Nigel says a little sarcastically.
"Exactly!""Why do you ask, Ivette?" Shauna says curiously.
"Well, you know, magic's, like, totally sweet, right..." Ivette replies coyly.
"Damn straight!" Joanie hollers.
"And it's useful, too, you know...""Sometimes.""Always!""And I was talking with Eta, and I thought, well, where do I sign up? You know what I'm saying?""Aw yeah! Who's got a spare magic-thing? Anyone?" Joanie asks as they walk along the street. Nigel, Shauna and Raven all shake their heads. Just ahead of them seems to be a police line, guarded by several officers of the law. Noticing them makes Ivette a little nervous, it seems.
THE DUNKER, meanwhile, feels an odd poking sensation at the back of his head, and the pseudo-Joanie voice in his mind rings out soon after that.
~Hey, fat dude. Wanna be a masterful magical man? Impress the ladies? I may have something for ya.~
Author
Topic: The Forgotten Art: Approaching the Nexus (Read 271129 times)