"Whoah, what a night... Did anyone see my pants?"
Get up, cover family jewels with one hand, I'm not a display to gawk at. Locate pair of pants to borrow.
[A Man Of Pitiable Nakedness: 4]
They don't seem to particularly mind you keeping one hand squarely locked on your nuts as you ask them to help you locate some pants. In fact, they seem absolutely keen on assisting, their knotty and greatly varied shapes getting to work almost immediately before you have the chance to blunder much further - a team in particular is quickly dispatched to liberate the person you nearly crushed under their own tent and politely nudge you into a place where you can hopefully do less damage.
[The Loaners: 2]
You are in no time at all brought a pair of sublimely itchy woolen breeches. Or maybe they're slacks for a person much shorter than you are - either way they're pants and they're free, and you think it wildly impolite to say no. In the process Lee is also brought along somehow, or maybe she brings herself - she's not behind you one moment, and then she is the next in a confusing turn of events, staring intently at the back of your head in a way you don't need minding to at least suspect.
"Yeah, I can't punch through the door or anything like that since my bones are currently nonexistent, but I can open a hole in the door or one of the walls for you. Where d'you want it?"
Allow the guard captain to indicate where she wants the hole and presumably form up a bunch of soldiers near the place, then REND the door/wall/whatever to bits.
[A Sound Plan: 5]
The commander considers this idea, and seems to consider it practicable enough... one one condition, which is that her troops get to retreat beforehand in case this, much like seemingly half but mathematically more like a third of these events, goes catastrophically and unnaturally wrong. You shrug - same difference to you, you suppose.
The commander signals a retreat and a very generous widening of the perimeter, just enough to cordon off the area while remaining as far as possible from the action before it's time to move in. You would chuckle affably at their overwhelming caution if the act of doing so wouldn't be extremely painful. You'll have this done in a jiffy. Easiest souls you have ever made, you think as your murder-thought hums with power and petty malice.
REND
[Word: 2]
With a shriek the murder-thought shoots forth at twice the speed of sound, and carves through wood and stone with equal ease much like a bullet would not, leaving a hole the size of your thumb that would most likely be lethal to any mere human it hit - storehouses, unfortunately, are built to withstand such stresses and thus even after it bursts out the other end and cuts off a chunk of a neighboring roof on its shrieking return the place remains standing, and unfortunately very much barricaded.
[A Handy Commotion: 4]
Although you are fairly sure that got someone's attention - several someones, in fact, currently gathering cautiously around the dormers on the roof, most of them looking at your strange and naked alien figure for a good long second or two.
Thomas shrugged, completely missing her overtures. "I suppose it would make sense to travel together. Is there anything you need to do here first?" He looked around the area. "I could probably eat something. It'd make sense to eat before we left."
Accept offer. Look for eats.
Is she being too subtle, her eyes seem to ask, or are you merely too polite to outright refuse her? She regards you like some kind of riddle as she fails to miss a beat in conversation - why no, Mr. Minstep, to be perfectly honest it would be very much appreciated if you could assist her with leaving as soon as possible. You see, there's a bit of a canyon on the way, and it's seemingly very unfriendly to human life attempting to cross it and- yes, actually, she backpedals briefly, lunch of some kind would also be very good.
[Good Eats: 3]
Although she can't say she can easily imagine where you might find something edible out here. She's hardly a woodswoman, so she couldn't tell you whether, say,
these berries would be safe to eat, she begins to explain as you stop in front of a small bush laden with blue-black berries. Though there is an easy way to check, she says as she picks out a handful. She parts her lips ever so slightly as she nears a particular berry to her mouth, but stops as she looks around - ah, she says with a smile, look at the two clanfolk gawking there. Probably not safe then, she says, carefully pocketing the handful.
You suppose there's also a simpler solution than foraging about - surely these clansmen here are at least familiar with the lay of the land. You've heard they tend to be rural folk, maybe you could ask if they have some food or know where to get some, even if you don't quite like the way they're looking at you through those pointy masks of theirs.
"Okay, I'm going to try to fix this, but it's probably going to go poorly, so I'd hide on the stairway for a minute or two if I were you."
I give the doctor time to back off, then address the crack in the ground in an attempt to calm it down a bit. "Your HUNGER is sated."
[Esoteric Considerations: 5]
Oh dear, the doctor says. Are you sure? Yes, you say, you're very sure this is probably going to go poorly. She looks at the crack - on one hand, the rest of the house is rationally unlikely to be much safer, considering this is the origin of the movement. Much less safe, in fact. On the other hand, there is the strong possibility that anywhere at all is safer than in here, especially given your misgivings about what you're about to do.
She thinks for a second. So that leaves the third hand, which is that she's terribly curious about what it is you intend to do, and that to be frank then if she has a good chance of dying either way, she'd rather it be facing a very unusual phenomenon rather than while running away from it. If you don't mind, that is. As such, she'd prefer to stand behind you if it's all the same to you, she offers with a smile. You... guess, sure.
The doctor makes good on her word after taking a moment to deposit all her woolen blankets in the stairwell, and stands behind you as you face the gaping wound in reality and make good on yours. You attempt to speak the Word in conjunction with mere human language - it is an attempt doomed to fail, the anticipation of its speaking drowning out your thoughts even before you manage to form the thin core of context around it, but you try anyway.
HUNGER
[Word: 5]
Your companion shrinks back and clamps down on your shoulders instinctively as the Word makes the house quiver with a fine vibration as the spacetime-wound catches your wavelength and owns it, adjusting itself in light of inspiration. It rumbles with a newfound human desire for flesh and a newborn inhuman thirst for form, and its jaws open in a roar as interpreted by a thing unfamiliar with the concept of sound, stopping just short of outright exploding your eardrums as it begins to pounce with innumerable limbs of searing, arcing lightning coalescing into a shape as close to you as a second of terrible clarity can convey.
[Burning Desire: 6+
1 vs. 2]
You are about to jump to the side as it occurs to you just how screwed you might be here, and the doctor pulls back - together you manage something of a backward diagonal dodge - she falls to the ground and you land softly on her as the surreal wound-beast crackles on over and past, and you hear a set of wardrobes horrifically dissolve into so much quark slurry and strange matter, proving once and for all that there is a sound that can terrify on an atomic level. The cellar simultaneously broadens and shrinks, rotates and elongates and spaghettifies as spacetime feels like it's being rendered into a spectrum of its component parts, and your eyes fill with bright light briefly.
But as unreality corrodes the laws of the world, so too can unreality overreach where it does not belong. And so do the pieces picked apart fuse once more, the spare weight of impossibility becoming magnetism, gravity and light reasserting itself with an ignition that sets the wound itself aflame. It shrieks in what is almost your voice before it is undone, and as electricity arcs from every sharp edge and you feel yourself suddenly pulled down along with the doctor your next breath enters your throat with a refreshingly real quality to it, your brain celebrating the return of causality with a sudden rush of endorphins as the wound explodes into one last surge of light, then is no more.
[A Resolution: 4]
The doctor gasps for air as your weight stops bearing down on her quite so much. Her next word comes with a nigh-religious thrill.
SYNTHESIS
Academic, but apt. Your own mad grin subsides as the sensation of time passing in three whole dimensions of space begins to lose its ecstatic novelty.
"Yes, please. Then I suppose you'll want to start with the warning direly?"
Accept his hospitality. I doubt any poison is capable of harming me, anyway.
The hissing turns out to be a glass jar filled with extraordinarily strong kombucha. So strong in fact that you smell it before the jar is even properly opened. The watchman digs around in a pile for something resembling a mug - something is indeed found, though its half-melted condition does seem to indicate it came here by rather unlikely means. The mug goes to you.
First to drink is the watchman, checking for impurities and finding none from the looks of it (though his unchanging expression does make you wonder if he can taste anything at all). He swills it a good twenty seconds, thoughtfully holding the open jar the entire time. Good, not best, he pronounces after painfully swallowing the brew, the strength of it clearing a good deal of his throat congestion to the point where he sounds almost human.
Next is the skeleton. Despite a certain liveliness to its twitches, the watchman pours the tea on it like a libation, and the skeleton hisses in a sort of approval that seems intuitively reasonable to you, but you can't for the life of you pinpoint why that might be. It starts to tap its foot slowly on the ground, the rhythmic clacking substituting for actual music that the mummy is quick to supplement with arrhythmic banging on its helmet.
Third is you - you hold out your mug hesitantly and the watchman tips the jar very deliberately. A good deal of the brew pours in, and in a fluid motion a watery flat chunk of yellowish-whie follows, splashing a bit of the drink around as it settles atop your mug. Mother of tea, the watchman rasps out. Lucky, but drink in one gulp.
You look at the "tea" as the watchman tries to figure out how the mummy's faceplate works again, and how to make it stop banging on its helmet. He looks at the skeleton, but its constant grin betrays its complete unhelpfulness to the situation immediately. He turns back toward you, and you are about to exchange a meaningful look before the watchman gets a painful reminder why looking at you directly is a poor idea.
So, you say after the first minute, the kombucha steaming in your hands inexplicably, how about some dire warnings? You relish this chance to avoid eye contact. The watchman coughs, then starts hacking, and finally goes into something between cackling and choking. What was question, he asks. Dire warnings, you say. Oh, he says. Not many ways to warn. Further is death - what more need you know?
Leif Erikson, Miner
- Naked
- Itchy Woolen Britches
- A Word: INEVITABLE
- A Word: APOCALYPSE
- Induced Inebriation: Utterly Wasted
- Body Count: 228
- Mead of Poetry (5 shining revelations remaining)
- Enders' Friend: The Grave of Red Clouds Parting
- 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: the Thief of Thoughts
- An Ancient Sea: The Hedonist's Inspiration
- The Miracle of Life: An Improper Guest
Eileen Minett, Vinyl Collector
- Naked
- Rusty, bloodstained knife
- A Word: HUNGER
- A Word: SYNTHESIS
- A Weapon: Explosive Cysts
- Grenade Jumping: A Solid Technique
- The Good Doctor: Fellow Naked And Confused Traveler
- Higher Tonight: There And Back Again
Jack Daniels, Karate Man
- Naked
- Red and gold vest and breeches combo
- Leather boots
- Traces of Mischief: 90% Boneless
- Wounds: 1
- 14033 gp (in sack)
- The Queen's Guard: Tentative 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 Weapon: Murder-Thought
- Uncoupled: Strength
- Wooden Door
- The Winding Path of Inspiration: Run Like Hell
- 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 Worm
- 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 Good Doctor: An Eager Listener
- Body Count: 3
Thomas Minstep, Insurance Agent
- Troubles In Anglefork Town: Bearer of the Sword
- A Word: ABSENCE
- A Word: GOODBYE
- The Doom Guard: A Productive Discussion
- A Weapon: The Sword They Fear
- Traces of Mischief: Whole-Body Radioactive Burn
- 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 Good Doctor: An Island of Sanity
- The Queen's Guard: A Reward Well Earned
- The New Queen: Lasting Gratitude
- Lonely Roads: The Man, The Legend
- The One They Fear: A Satisfactory Contract
- The Box: Absolutely Delightful
- Body Count: 2
Oscar Wilde, Chemistry Teacher
- A Word: REVELATION
- Wounds: 2
- Traces of Mischief: Glowing Facial Rift
- The Serpent's Egg: Dissemination
- Body Count: 4
- 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
- Fuligin Gates: A Guest At The Watch-House
Author
Topic: Our Salvation: It Is Written (Read 264614 times)