The thrill of paperwork still flowing through him, Thomas nodded. "Yes! Let's be off right away."
Onward toward Elizabeth! No time to waste.
[To The Big City: 4]
They follow you like little ducklings, these newly insured. Occasionally they try to exactly match your steps. Some of them dare challenge the occasional bush or intimidate a passing badger-thing, the latter of which vomits lightning in your general direction, splitting a tree wide open. You quicken your pace.
Occasionally you veer through little valleys, or cross small mountain brooks. There are old roads in some places, but these prove only middlingly useful, overgrown as they are. You go past an ancient aqueduct, a shockingly classical construction that seems to have collapsed into leading straight down, forming the spring from which a brand new river forms, slowly carving a gouge in the earth.
Your progress is not unnoticed either - by the end of the first day you've run into another group that Nobody appears to be familiar with - the treefishers, who try to tempt passing wildlife with shining lures from atop their isolated thickets. You spend the night with them in a remarkably tasteful, if questionably constructed series of tree forts, and as your followers get to chatting with them, it doesn't take long before you and Silver have drafted up another six contracts.
[In The Morning I'll Be Gone: 4]
They seem a spirited lot, these fishers. Also quite interested in finding different thickets, the badgers around here have been giving them trouble. There's a fairly large one, apparently, that's started to grow odd scales and horns. Oh dear, you say, some kind of skin disease? The elder of the treefishers, a man 30 years old at best, would say so - happens sometimes in the north, don't you know. You get old enough and strange things start to happen to you. Usually they don't get this shiny though, thing looked absolutely covered in strange gemstones. Gets sharper every day, Tabernacle adds. He's apparently their scout by virtue of drawing the shortest straw.
You get to asking them if there's any roads nearby. Such as to Elizabeth.
They say yes - there's the old highway from the dead lands, just a few miles to the north. Spiders live there, however. Lots of Spiders. You'd be better off trying to climb the western ridge, Tabernacle chuckles. A lot of people fell off that, another treefisher clarifies. Tall bloody thing, their largest member spits, bottom's strewn with bones. She's heard a thing lives up there, kicks people right the hell off.
Would there be a way around, Silver asks after wincing at this. Southward, perhaps?
There's the highway to the north again, one mentions. That's got a handy ramp and everything. Or was it a tunnel? Lots of Spiders notwithstanding. Southward though, you don't want to go south. Or southwest, for that matter. That's where the wood full of goddamned bears is. Not friendly bears, you feel it relevant to ask. Not very friendly bears at all, Tabernacle nods.
Yep, seems like the time to do it. Make sure to save the pithy one-liner for after her head hits the ground.
[Where's Your Head At: 1+2 vs. 4]
Your murder-thought zips toward her head, ripping into her neck in the distraction and coming out the other end suddenly and, you notice, completely bloodlessly. This gives you a moment's pause as a blood-curdling gurgle issues from Rainbow's punctured throat and you feel her suddenly violently thrash in your mind against the legion of hands and teeth encircling her thoughts.
[Don't Let The Walls Cave In On You: 3 vs. 3]
She does not regain her faculties as you manage to keep hold of her, her clawed hands blindly swiping all around you as her perceptions still struggle with your inner temple. You figure this will need a more personal touch.
[We Can Live On, Live On Without You: 4+2 vs. 4]
You spit in your hands and rub them together as you step aside, the horrendous creature surging forward dumbly and instinctively, higher thought processes still eluding her as you step up from behind and place one hand on her head, the other on her shoulders. That done, you begin the process of wrenching it off her shoulders. She resists and tries to fight you off, joints bending at unnatural angles as talons whiff past your face. You adjust your grip - wouldn't want to ruin the skull with a careless tug, would you? It's such a strange skull, too.
[Don't Let The Walls Cave In On You: 6 vs. 3]
Her resistance starts to subside as her mind is drawn further into your temple. A deep and powerful anguish, satisfyingly not your own, streams from the edges of your perception like a half-remembered dream piercing the silence.
[You Get What You Give, That Much Is True: 1+2 vs. 2]
She goes limp in your hands and you conclude the operation by pulling the head straight off, the murder-thought skipping through to sever the spine, sinew and calcified blood vessels all tangled together in her bizarre anatomy. You hold it up in one hand, her mind trapped and suddenly traumatized, and send her body tumbling into a nearby wall with a well-placed kick.
You meet the gaze of her severed head and try to think of something cool to say. You notice that something of a crowd has gathered. Better make it good.
[Where's Your Head At: 2]
Should have, uh, had a hand on your wits there, whatever your name was. Lady. Shit, you should have had something prepared for this.
Rainbow's eyes meet yours in the last moments of her fleeting consciousness as it is torn apart by yours. She devotes the rest of her life to giving you a trio of anatomically unlikely eye rolls, her mouth forming a disgusted scowl before mouthing a word of inestimable contempt.
EXECRABLE
You lower the head by your side and look around. The twenty-odd pirates in the area look on with raised eyebrows. Was that really the best you could do, they seem to ask as they shake their heads. I mean, good job on beheading that ghoul or whatever it was, but
really?
Make sure tap is closed, lid closed, imagine it full of wonderful tasty liquor and ensure the DRINK is real.
You step over to the tap and screw it shut, and give the lid an experimental tap. Seems secure enough, woman on top notwithstanding. You don't have the heart to move her, soundly sleeping as she is. You point and speak the Word.
DRINK
[Word: 5]
The scent of apples and concentrated alcohol fills the room as the barrel hums, sloshes and rather appropriately levitates, a forbidden universal harmony turning liquid inside it as the Platonic ideal of inebriation forms inside it, not so much a beverage as the idea of one, ineffable and possessed of a supreme power that the barrel seems to have trouble containing as it floats upright, the passed-out woman sliding off it gently and falling to the ground, her eyes suddenly opening as she sniffs the air.
A boozy gleam permeates the room as you concentrate the possibilities within. What is inside that barrel, you may possibly ask. And you don't know, not exactly. But it's something you've never drunk before, something you didn't know you needed in your life. But if you do drink it, you feel that very little in the world stands a chance of topping it.
Oh, Kava says, sitting up and rubbing her head from where she fell. Oh, her head. Her poor head. She looks around at the others, who similarly appear to be waking up. She turns to you. Oh god, what happened? How did she get here? What's that, she points at the barrel, and squints a moment. It looks oddly familiar.
Her eyes dart to you as a rising panic cuts through the hangover. Oh dear, she didn't do anything... embarrassing, did she? You have to tell her.
"Thank you, I think I will - it's always interesting to explore old towns. I'll come back and see you again before I go, though. Any last bits of advice?"
This should be fun. Just like those holidays to the seaside.
He'll certainly catch up with you later, worry not! As for advice, don't let the more enthusiastic functionaries bother you! If they do, you're alive and they're not, and tell them they should know better than to hassle you beyond what you find permissible.
You leave the alderman to his paperwork and head down the stairs out of the tower back into Administration Square, where the eyes of a dozen inhuman statues piled atop the ruins of the rest of the administrative headquarters regard you silently in a way that makes you shiver. Streets wind every which way from here, including up and down, around the steeples, trenches and temples of the massive tell, all piled together like geological strata, broken in places with veins of fresher construction. Few lights abound in the streets, and the sweepers occasionally walk through the alleys, giving you bestial looks as they take a moment to establish that you are merely a feckless gawker as opposed to a filthy vagrant, the two meaningful categories of people in a street sweeper's unlife.
At the top lie the terraces of the town, where winged yet flightless beasts gather and watch the streets below, occasionally crawling up or down along the walls to gather something of interest, you're not quite sure what. Some of them cast their icy blue eyes at the bell towers rising from several places, waiting intently for a particular time. A few non-functionaries have gathered on a nearby rooftop, sitting around a table for a purpose you cannot quite gauge.
Down one of the many winding streets as you walk to take a look around you see what looks to be the merchant quarter, with dilapidated merchants standing in well-kept stalls, closely attended by creatures with needle-like claws that they ceaselessly sharpen. Occasionally one of the merchants gives a dusty, incoherent call into the overall silence of the market, and the light coming from some of the indoor shops looks bright enough to easily outshine most of the rest of the city.
Deeper down than that you hear the huddling and crawling masses flowing like groaning rivers as they are driven by fork-wielding officers of the law and deposited in their appointed residences for their rounds of daily engagement. Further in, you hear the distorted sounds of a band disastrously attempting to play for some kind of social event, and occasional brief flashes of white light.
There are also the temples, of course, whether to gods or machines or something else entirely. Most of them seem empty of anything but their remnant clergy, and down a particularly darkened street you see a primitive-looking adobe edifice illuminated like a lighthouse, a creature with a face like a lunar eclipse welcoming a cartload of barely-conscious worshipers from a surly gang of street sweepers while creatures of a wide variety of disturbing shapes look on jealously from their own empty houses of worship.
And then, not at all far from here in fact, there is also what looks and indeed seems to be denoted as some kind of ancient theater. You hear voices come from within - as crumbled and buried in miscellaneous buildings as it is, the theater nevertheless lets itself be very much heard over quite a distance.
You pause as you wander back to Administration Square. A street sweeper circles, considerably closer now as your presence continues to visibly irritate it, before disengaging. You feel it best not to linger in the streets for long.
"Okay, so... we're halfway to a solution."
I focus on the rocks again and direct their HUNGER outward, away from the cave.
You say so, the doctor replies, apparently transfixed by the noises of predatory geology until now, but is it the kind of solution that anybody would want? You reassure her, it'll be fine. You've never heard of a problem that you couldn't solve without provoking an unusual appetite where you would least expect it. You snap your fingers and turn to the darkness as you redouble your assault on the laws of reality.
HUNGER
[Word: 6]
You take the ravenous hunger that suffuses the rock and unify it - rather than hunger for each other, they should hunger for one thing and one thing only. You think a second on what that would be. Human flesh? Best not. The sun, the clouds? Too far off. Trees, you decide - the smell of resin and the feel of leaves, this will the rocks hunger for. You force this into them, an insatiable appetite for all things arboreal, and let it settle for a second as the rocks stop momentarily.
It does not take them long to pick up the scent. A forest is very close indeed. Wood, even closer. It contracts like a mineralized jellyfish, a thousand mouths of stone in an amorphous body, and rushes out in a mass of razor sharp fangs as it rips free of the cave mouth and seeks wilderness. Sunlight suddenly bathes the cave and all things within it, nearly blinding you after all this darkness. You catch a glimpse of the rocky monstrosity as it leaves you far behind, moving far quicker than you'd expect of a thing probably weighing several dozen tons. You blink and look again - nothing of it seen as it has disappeared over a hill, presumably having caught sight of its quarry.
Hopefully you won't run into it again. You'd hate it to mistake you for a tree.
The doctor admits to being initially pessimistic, but you have managed it. With minimal damage, even. Now all you need to do is to get the poor creature to follow you out the passage, what do you say?
Leif Erikson, Miner and Lush
- Half-basket of apple-like mushrooms
- Paper party crown (worn)
- Moth-robe (worn)
- Itchy Woolen Britches (worn)
- A Word: INEVITABLE
- A Word: APOCALYPSE
- A Word: DRINK
- Body Count: 228
- Mead of Poetry (4 shining revelations remaining)
- Enders' Friend: The Grave of Red Clouds Parting
- Inscribed Wooden Stylus
- Iron spear
- 1.03 gp
- The Box: ?
- Induced Lucidity: A Map of Things Real and Imagined
- Compatibility: Minding
- Tricks of the Mind: Perception, Memory
- Tricks of the Mind: Engagement, Negation, Abstraction, Prestige
- Tricks of the Mind: the Self, the Other
- Gods of the Underground: Did You Just What
- A Visit From The Stork: Is What You Yes
- The Voracious Dark: Two Deals Made
- The Voracious Dark: The Promised Sixth
- Moth's Flight: Honorary Clansman
- A Night That Burns Forever: Later Today
- The Miracle of Life: Wayward Rabbit
Eileen Minett, Vinyl Collector
- Distilled alcohol (in flask)
- Spirits of salt (in clay jar)
- Soaps of elk, bear, bat and snake
- 4 flasks of lamp oil
- Oil lamp (lit)
- Linen stoat shirt (worn)
- Stoat trousers (worn)
- Comfy slippers (worn)
- Never-made scimitar (blackened, slightly dull)
- Tooth-handled hunting knife
- Black leather boots
- An assemblage of amber and amethysts
- Silver thread-necklace
- Onyx spiral earrings
- 2 oaken rings
- Rusty, bloodstained knife
- A Word: HUNGER
- A Word: SYNTHESIS
- A Weapon: Explosive Cysts
- Grenade Jumping: A Solid Technique
- The Good Doctor: Secret Histories
- Sword of the Sand People: Cleaning Supplies
- Sword of the Sand People: The Services of a Minder
- Higher Tonight: There And Back Again
- The Gods of the Underground: A Welcome Guest
Jack Daniels, Karate Man
- Red and gold vest and breeches combo (worn)
- Leather boots (worn)
- Rubber mattress (filled with water)
- Rainbow's ghoulish head
- 14033 gp (in sack)
- Poor Unfortunate Soul: Forever Captive
- The Queen's Guard: Actual Asset
- Powers of the Beyond: Gardener of Thoughts
- Garden of Thoughts: the Stoat-Magistrate
- Dusty Wooden Speaking-Trumpet
- Crossbow Bolt (in throat)
- A Word: REND
- A Word: SILENCE
- A Word: EXECRABLE
- A Weapon: Murder-Thought
- Uncoupled: Strength
- Wooden Door
- The Winding Path of Inspiration: Run Like Hell
- Induced Lucidity: The Silent Garden
- Elongated Affairs: Enemy of the New State
- A Place In History: Vastly Unreliable
- 2 rats, crushed
- 1 rat, strangled
- 1 rat, live
- Travels In The Fourth Dimension: Sunday ± 2 Days
- Doomstones: So High Up But Such A Bitter View
- The Majordomo: A Great Divide Between Us Now
- The Voracious Dark: Decreasing Demand
- The Voracious Dark: More Specific Requests
- The Vault of Heavens: The Captain's Quarters
- Body Count: 3
Thomas Minstep, Insurance Agent
- A Word: ABSENCE
- A Word: GOODBYE
- A Word: WORM
- A Weapon: The Sword They Fear
- Insurance contracts, signed in triplicate: 13
- Gamble
- Nobody Cares
- Helen Clampitt
- Lily
- Undine and Prosper Eke
- Silver
- Tabernacle, treefisher scout
- Treefisher elder
- 4 treefishers
- Make A Man Out Of You: Battle-Tested
- The Grip of Tharn: Insurance Against The Storm
- Ranging fork
- 2 feet of sinew-thread
- Tooth-needle
- A Bowl, Black and Knobby
- Tight Leather Pants (worn)
- Incredibly Tight Blue Dress (worn, mutilated, mildly provocative)
- Travels In The Fourth Dimension: Sunday, July 25th, 409 S.D.
- The Queen's Guard: A Reward Well Earned
- The New Queen: Lasting Gratitude
- Lonely Roads: Walk Away
- The Box: Absolutely Delightful
- Body Count: 2
Oscar Wilde, Chemistry Teacher
- A Word: REVELATION
- The Wicked King's Missive On Economic Reform (in massive silver scroll case)
- Wounds: 1
- Traces of Mischief: Glowing Facial Rift
- The Serpent's Egg: Dissemination
- Body Count: 4
- Cornerstone Helm (worn, collecting light)
- Time-ender's measure (wrapped, processing? stopping?)
- 10 m of rope
- Half a candle
- 1 rat, skinless and smoked
- 6 gp
- Poor Misshapen Dice
- Lock of Hair (unidentified)
- Iron nail, unused
- An Inauspicious Key
- Burlap Foot Wrappings (worn)
- Burlap Hand Wrappings (worn)
- Moth-Eaten Hat (worn)
- Respectable Brown Skirt (worn)
- Old Brown Waistcoat (worn)
- Bright Yellow Tunic (worn)
- A Wealth of Burlap Ribbons
- The Winding Path of Inspiration: The Less Dangerous Friend
- The King's Court: The Greatest Gift of All
- The King's Court: The North Wind's Gift
- The King's Court: The East Wind's Gift
- The King's Court: The South Wind's Gift
- The King's Court: The West Wind's Gift
- The King's Court: A Gift For The Wicked King