Smoke Mirrors:
Contemplating your situation, you find another strange thread of knowledge tugging at your memory. You imagine – no, you envision an unfamiliar pattern of symbols which you somehow know could, if etched into the ground, create a sort of drain that would empower you with another being's energy. Another being such as that corn behemoth which happens to contain a great store of energy you feel you could be using much better. Grinning, you quickly shape a sharp claw from your shadowy form and prepare to etch the floor...
Ah, you think. Right. The floor is made of corn.
A litter of cornstalks and corn straw and discarded kernels thatches the ground, offering no useful surface to write the runes appearing in your mind. Unwilling to let that stop you, though, you improvise, hastily scrabbling bits of stalk and cob into shapes at least loosely resembling the symbols you imagined, and, just as the thundering of the corn beast reaches you and you turn away in fright —
you see your corn-runes glowing, and turn back to see the beast suspended mid-lunge. You don't feel its energy being drained, or, if it is, it's draining very slowly, but it seems you constructed these improvised symbols well enough to shield you. Cautiously, you lay a hand on the gently vibrating corn making up the beast's arm – and at that moment you are forced to jump away, as the metal object from before comes careening through the cornstalks to your left and slams fully into the monster.
OceanSoul (and darkwarlock3):
You have no idea where you are and no idea how to get back to Seattle from here. Before you can even begin to think about getting up and looking around, though, you both hear a distant voice calling for help! It's actually a very strange voice, though, sort of growly and unnatural, like someone having trouble making sounds with a mouth that was never designed for it. Still, someone needs help, you think! You took an oath for this! Well, not this specifically, but it's clearly within the spirit! You're obviously going to run off to help, right?
Before you can decide, the troll grabs you and slings you over his shoulder.
Blood_Librarian:
The mer-elf – Kalamos, you remember, though you were a little distracted when he said it – looks you over thoroughly, seemingly inspecting and taking stock of all the equipment on your person. You're too surprised even to object to this, at the moment. He then returns to his computer, which you noticed recently made another dinging sound, and resumes typing.
You realise that you have your smartphone, which is perhaps more like a tablet, or a phablet or whatever idiotic thing they're calling them nowadays, a nice watch, a military-grade radio, and not much else worthy of mention. You wish you'd had the opportunity to grab some of your more interesting devices, but you didn't know you'd be leaving your apartment for the last time. You're less armed than you'd like to be, since you weren't on deployment when the apocalypse struck, and South Korea has strict gun regulations for civilians, but you do have an array of knives that would stagger lesser souls, secreted away in every imaginable hiding spot. For a moment you think "wait, how could he possibly have known about—" but you quickly discard that train of thought as meaningless and even nonsensical. Man, sometimes you think the weirdest things, right? Well, you don't dwell on that a moment more.
Your approximate uselessness evaluation: 300% useless.
blueturtle1134:
You attempt to bite the squirrel. This goes very, very badly. It turns out that the direct approach is suboptimal against an angry, territorial squirrel at least twice your size. Instead of closing around its furry neck, your jaws are interrupted by a forceful smack from its paw, pushing you to the ground, whereupon it bites you instead, like this is Soviet Russia or something. You are now dazed, bitten, bleeding, and probably going to catch some weird embarrassing squirrel disease. Luckily you had the presence of mind to shout for help first.
Jilladilla:
Ah, finally, you think! Back to the corn monster! You were getting impatient waiting to find out what was going to happen to you, and all this weird in-universe narration business was giving you a headache, too. You point the car in the direction of the thumping and stomp on the gas again, cackling maniacally all the while. It feels as though the earth itself is lifting you up and pushing you forward, and it doesn't take long at all before you plow directly into a wall of corn that you assume was probably the corn monster, though you only get a brief glimpse of it as you punch through and careen on about twenty more yards before you slow to a stop. For a moment the cornfield seems to be flickering, and as it re-stabilises you look behind you to see a huge pile of corn, unmoving and seemingly hanging in the air, with an approximately car-sized hole about a foot above ground level veiled in ethereally-crackling black energy. Through that hole you see a ramp of stone leading up to it that you are almost certain wasn't there before, and off to the side you see... a strange black thing, far more solid-looking than the energy in the corn mass.
Very slowly, loose kernels and occasionally whole cobs seem to be drawing up off the ground to fly into the mass.
darkwarlock3 (and OceanSoul):
You grab the gnome and run toward the cry! In a few minutes, you crash in onto a strange scene: a hapless wolf, bloodied and beaten, being kicked around by the giant squirrel you pacified earlier. Some rustling on the other side evinces another forest-dweller coming to investigate the call, in the person of the small squirrel who resisted your charms in the same fight. Interesting!
crazyabe:
You sink silently to the floor and shut your eyes. Man, you three are even worse company than Chantar. Kalamos finally finishes typing and half-turns to sort of glower at both of you still in the room.
Author
Topic: Cataclysm (Read 9130 times)