"I'll try, but I'll note that the thought is somewhat tied to my hand, I think. Leave that alone and you shouldn't be sliced apart too much."
Try to make the murder-thought hang around just outside the door for the duration of the operation. Then strip down (I don't want these clothes damaged just after I got them) and lie down on the slab. Deep breaths. Pain only exists in the mind.
[Leave Your Thoughts At The Door: 2]
You place your murder-thought outside, pointing it at a handy rock to try and destroy, then shut the door. As it burrows back in through the wood, you get the feeling it might not be all that easy to leave your own mental projection somewhere else. Oh well. You guess there's only so much you can do. Now it's time to get naked, lie back and try not to think of manslaughter. Lay your body down, forget about your troubles, hit the lights. The blindfold goes on. All is dark.
[Romancing the Stone: 1]
Rather predictably, the blacksmith starts on the
other hand. Good god, that hurts. Pain is just an illusion, pain is just an illusion, pain is weakness leaving the body, oh good god almighty, pain is anything but this! You feel like a slab of meat as the bones in your other hand are crushed, ruined, hammer blows raining down up your arm, liquefying flesh, rubbing the nerves into stone, moving up to the shoulder joint. Somehow it hurts even more with each hit. You're not even sure how that's possible, but every moment comes with a new surprise.
[Blessed Agonies: 5]
Nevertheless, you hold on tight, remain still. Feel the pain, recognize it, internalize it. Pain becomes a fact, an unavoidable reality that you may as well get well acquainted with now. You concentrate on keeping your murder-thought completely still, using it to count the cracks in the stone foundation as it circles round the blacksmith doing his work. He moves along, hammering your chest now, shattering the spine, spilling the organs as he slices your skin with a number of sharp knives of varying sizes, grinding the ichor that remains into dust, then shoveling it back into vaguely human-shaped mounds methodically. He goes along the leg, the feeling of your kneecap shattering bothering you perhaps less than you would have thought now that your spine is completely ruined. The other leg gets the same treatment, and then the last arm. At this point even your injured hand doesn't feel more than a mite uncomfortable against the background of sheer displeasure you're experiencing, your entire body trembling weakly under the hammer as your glorious transformation into jellied gore nears completion.
You feel the hammer being raised once more, this time above your throat, but the blacksmith slows his hand so that the hot, gore-covered tip of it merely touches your Adam's apple. Your entire body twitches, and though you've clearly gone through a phase transition for the most part, it still all seems vaguely connected. But only vaguely. You don't think you can take any more, and the blacksmith seems to have noticed also. Ah, he says, are you ALL RIGHT there? You gurgle something back, not having the lungs to formulate a coherent reply.
The blindfold comes off. You dare not look at the rest of yourself.
WELL, the blacksmith says. Seems that reprogramming your substrate is going to be a little more DIFFICULT than anticipated. Though he, er, must CONGRATULATE you on your durability. The measure seems to have not steered him wrong as to your capacity to endure punishment! Mind over matter, as it were!
[Every Tear A Lesson Learned: 2]
You rise, not one bone beneath your neck left unshattered, your body mostly a bag of disjointed flesh. It doesn't hurt even slightly less than a few moments ago.
HM, says the blacksmith. The method needs work. A LOT of work! But such is the nature of experimentation! Some leads invariably don't pay off! Somehow this fails to reassure you.
"Sorry. I'm not exactly used to this sort of thing."
Mentally shut up / clear my mind / stop 'nucleating' or whatever.
[Your Nuclei Are Showing: 6]
You stare ahead, emptying your mind. The room starts to darken as you see, hear and feel, but decreasing amounts of sensation lead to perception. You sense the hand of the child on your head as she sees what you're doing, and your feeling suddenly meets a precipice - into the abyss it tumbles, and senselessness ensues.
[Mischief In The Dark: 1]
You awaken some time later to an empty room, the minders having gone somewhere. How rude. You try the door. It does not open. Or rather it does, but not more than about half an inch, something very heavy, perhaps seven or even eight separate pieces of furniture judging by the sound, having been moved in front of it. You notice the window has been broken as well. How very strange.
Okay I'm not sure about the local customs but I can probably guess the meaning behind the skull.
I hide near the edge of the lake and watch the building for a while to see if I can see someone enter/leave, or any sign of what's going on in there. I also look around the lake clearing to see if there are any paths or roads leading away from here.
[Strange Comings And Goings: 6]
As the sun continues to climb higher in the sky, the green water of the lake becomes more and more reflective, the warm and sunny day reaching all the way down even here. You look on until you spot a reflection in the calm, still water, a murky shadow on the opposite coast, built like a bear with longer forelegs - or, rather, longer arms as you look closer, the shadow growing more humanoid as it steps closer to the edge in an ungainly fashion, a sizable net you'd think would be used more for butterflies than fish dragging behind it. The waters start to wave a little as fish grow agitated, some of them jumping upward out of the water.
You notice that there is no equivalent figure to the shadow in the same spot on the coast, the reflection moving with a life of its own as its net meets water and emerges on this side, catching one of the larger fish with intriguing deftness and pulling it back into the other side.
[Fisher's Eye: 3 vs. 3]
As you gaze into the reflection, the reflection gazes also into you, and gazes for a good long moment, leaning in with its eyes remaining invisible and tilting its head. As it makes out your shape, you hear a muffled burble emanate from the water, its disproportionate arm rising in a wave with a surprising lack of hostility in it.
When miner's guts tell him it's bad idea to stand on edge, miner does well to obey. Therefore Leif falls flat on his stomach, only carefully peering down.
Tear off biggest bush I can, set it on horrible APOCALYPTIC fire and throw down into the canyon. Hopefully it manages to tumble down all the way. Observe.
[I Have The Shrubbery: 4]
You head a few steps back, and soon an opportunity presents itself. Emitting your best viking death growl (Bathory would be proud!) you pull a smaller shrub right out of the ground, lifting it triumphantly above your head as you scream your Word of power!
APOCALYPSE
[Word: 6]
It bursts into a terrible flame above your head, and in the heat of the moment you leap upward like some kind of magically enhanced Torgeir Bryn and slam dunk the bush into the canyon. It skips along the side, punctuating every skip with a boom no doubt heard for miles around, rocks scattering as they are set aflame, sandstone and gneiss set aflame as if they were anthracite, and about halfway down it settles into a burning roll, leaving a brightly flaming trail in its wake before tumbling twice more, three dots and three dashes of flame leaving an SOS to the gods themselves before into the black separating line it tumbles and sinks, its white-hot flame dancing in the blackness briefly.
[This Is The End: 1]
It doesn't seem to be water, that much is clear. You don't think water tends to be very explosive for the most part, for not five seconds pass as you hear a violent explosion emanate from where the bush landed, a little bit of the canyon side crumbling and falling down into it as the line starts to glow bright and spread. You step a short distance back as the ground starts to shake. Huh. You're not really sure if that's how fault lines are supposed to work - you've never really done much hydraulic fracking, being a gold mining man at heart. But you think you've definitely upset
something with that maneuver!
Thomas pondered the itch fleetingly. Didn't that happen before? Oh well. It's probably best to just go; the lord seemed to have quite a bit on his mind. No sense in dragging out goodbyes. He'd just let a guard know if he saw one. Time to go!
Time to start heading out. Wasn't there a bridge going up? It's time to start heading to the airport.
If a guard is passed, pass the word that the lord's problem is solved satisfactorily.
You do head on over to the bridge outside, helpfully informing the rather large concentration of guards over there that they can tell the lord you've successfully helped him with his mother troubles. Excellent, says the royal guard commander overseeing the operations. What do you think of her new bridge, she asks, pointing at the rather wide construction of rope and boards her cadre of guards in varying states of undress have almost completed over the river, securing the last few boards at the moment. Insurable or not, she asks with a genial smile.
Spirits seem high around here. You see a few guards greedily eating some leftover rations from the war camp, and laughter comes from left, right and center as the guards are abuzz with ideas of plunder and raiding, but most of all being out of this goddamn castle at last. Most of them seem to scarcely believe it.
Leif Erikson, Miner
- A Word: INEVITABLE
- A Word: APOCALYPSE
- Wounds: 1
- Mead of Poetry (6 shining revelations remaining)
- Enders' Friend: The Grave of Red Clouds Parting
- Small brass box
- Body Count: 1
- Reappropriated, Clean Skirt
- Inscribed Wooden Stylus
- Iron spear
- 1.03 gp
- The Box: ?
- Induced Lucidity: the Aftermath, or the New Beginning
- 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: Quest for the North
Eileen Minett, Vinyl Collector
- In Living Memory: Yeah She's Probably Dead Isn't She I Think She's Dead Yeah
- Wounds: 3
- The Doom Guard: Consorting With The Enemy
- Exotic serrated zweihander
- White silk bandeau and loincloth
- Inauspicious Day: Off Into The Horizon
- Giant White Mushroom
- A Word: SEA
- A Word: HUNGER
- A Word: CHAOS
- A Weapon: Explosive Cysts
- The Voracious Dark: Three Connections Given
- Tower of the Mind: There's Something To Remember
- The New Queen: And Something To Forget
- Body Count: 1
- The Impromptu Prophecy: ?
- Sweet Little Children: Fond Farewell
Jack Daniels, Karate Man
- Naked
- Red and gold vest and breeches combo
- Leather boots
- Traces of Mischief: 90% Boneless
- Wounds: 4
- 14033 gp (in sack)
- The Flip Side: Uh, Yeah
- The Queen's Guard: Unusual Troublemaker
- Powers of the Beyond: Gardener of Thoughts
- Dusty Wooden Speaking-Trumpet
- Crossbow Bolt (in throat)
- A Word: REND
- A Word: SILENCE
- A Weapon: Murder-Thought
- Uncoupled: Strength
- Wooden Door (held)
- The Winding Path of Inspiration: Back To The Drawing Board
- Tower of the Mind: Endless Well of Mystery
- Induced Lucidity: A Garden Well-Tended
- Elongated Affairs: Enemy of the New State
- A Place In History: Vastly Unreliable
- Anglefork Castle: the Great Serpent
- The Obsolete Class: Suggested Victims
- 2 rats, crushed
- 1 rat, strangled
- 1 rat, live
- Travels In The Fourth Dimension: Sunday ± 2 Days
- The Impromptu Prophecy: There's A Mountain Higher Than We Knew
- 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 Good Doctor: A Recommendation
- Body Count: 3
Thomas Minstep, Insurance Agent
- Troubles In Anglefork Town: Bearer of the Sword
- Wounds: 2
- A Word: ABSENCE
- A Word: GOODBYE
- A Weapon: The Sword They Fear
- Traces of Mischief: Nausea's Depths
- A Bowl, Black and Knobby
- Anglefork Castle: From Another Time, Another Land
- Gross Incandescence: Partly Illuminated
- Tight Leather Pants (worn)
- Incredibly Tight Blue Dress (worn, mutilated, mildly provocative)
- Travels In The Fourth Dimension: Sunday, July 25th, 409 S.D.
- The Majordomo: Busy Morning
- The Good Doctor: House Call
- The Queen's Guard: A Reward Well Earned
- Make A Man Out Of You: A Crowning Achievement
- The New Queen: Lasting Gratitude
- Tower of the Mind: Advice Given
- The Obsolete Class: Let Them Be
- The One They Fear: A Satisfactory Contract
- A Place In History: A Worthwhile Associate
- The Box: Absolutely Delightful
- Body Count: 2
Oscar Wilde, Chemistry Teacher
- A Word: REVELATION
- The Serpent's Egg: Dissemination
- Body Count: 4
- Time-ender's measure (wrapped, yawning)
- 10 m of rope
- Half a candle
- This Is The End: A Grim Prophecy
- 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
- An Obsolete Class: Trustworthy Individual
- The Flip Side: the Denouement
- The Doom Guard: The Inquisition Moves On
- Tower of the Mind: Get Away
- The Winding Path of Inspiration: Future Hopes
Author
Topic: Our Salvation: It Is Written (Read 262262 times)