Mission Failstate Countdown: Three turns"Help, tweet. Fizzy... they are going to eat me. Do I mind? Um, I remember something. Something like... milk? No, like water, with something in it. Isn't that what milk is? What is milk?"
Chug down my mind-dulling potion, quickly.
Alright, you enter a state of detachment. Thinking is hard, but feeling is also dulled. Fear abates. It is not replaced with calm, really, just dullness.
Well, that was interesting. Lets spend a few minutes trying to return to belly side down again. Can I feel anything about the meat that went down?
You flop back upright. The Old Gnome calls out and several other gnomes come along and prod, push, and tug at you, getting you into a more natural position. They begin manually moving your limbs, one at a time. One begins brushing you with a stiff wire brush. It feels like water coursing down your scales. (4) You can sense the food in your gullet as well as you could have before your death. It's food. You are ... not full exactly, but not hungry. You cold eat more.
keep just out of range of the mist
(4) you move a block further away from Bruford and the Beast. The mist doesn't quite reach this far.
Climb the tallest building. Preferably with stairs.
(4) you find a fire escape style outside stairwell and climb up to the roof. It's not the tallest in the city, but you have a fairly good view. You can see the wall encircling Omega, much of the red-roofed Tradesmen's district you are in, a section that looks like a market area, complete with food courts and religious buildings, and some residential areas as well. You can't see Bruford, as he is toppled over, but you can hear the tantrum he is throwing, and you can see the devastation in that area. It looks surprisingly small in scope from up here.
Damaged corrored leg and cursed mobility means I can't do anything about the cloud, so the 5 results are just a delayed death sentence.
Guess I'll try to kill the fleshhorror in melee before I die from damage over time. Continue punching and stomping on the flesh thing until it stops moving and then keep smashing it.
(2) v (3) You tear chunks of mass from her, she dissolves all the fingers on your left hand. She's getting noticeably smaller. Hmm. (5) After pulverizing the flesh beneath you, you reach forward to grab one more of the heads, but it tears away from the greater mass, darting out of your reach before you recognize what has happened. A much smaller figure dashes out of sight around a corner. Vlad stops your corrosion from progressing, thogh.
Diplomacy time then go about healing people
"Miss flesh blob, can you please call down and not kill my compatriots? Feel free to eat the one sttacking you though."
(5) A golden laugh echoes from further along the alley at your words.
"Catch me if you can, Eater of Woes. Catch me, and eat my sorrows!" (2) you rest a hand on the angry rust giant and attempt to heal him. You stop the corrosion from getting worse, but are unable to reverse the effect. "Alright! Who else needs my Special Touch!" You shout looking around and wiggling your fingers suggestively.
Actually wait, the statue Gak is possessing has been assumed to be one of those anatomically correct ones, right? It's how I've always pictured him at least, but if your image is different feel free to discard this idea. Use ... I know one of the twin knives I have is better at slicing and the other's better at stabbing. Use the slicing one to cut off my tiny metallic ... you can tell what I'm referring to.
If that's a no-go, then still use the slicer to chop off ... a pinky toe or something.
I'm okay with you attempting self circumcision. Hmm. (1) (3) You make an absolutely horrible screeching sound as you attempt to slice off your metallic member. It's only partly successful. You gouge a chunk out of the side of it, dulling your blade to uselessness in the process. You howl at that loss much more dramatically than at the loss of an irrelevant bit of imaginary manhood. "This better be good," You snarl at the occultist. "I have paid dearly for it." He take your proffered part and begins the ritual: the usual draw2ing of dark sigils, chanting and screaming, sacrificing three rats, a lizard, and some unidentified squirming things ...
"The link is established. Make your summon, lest something else dominate the portal.""I
know how to talk to demons." You growl, doing that weird doll thing where one eye rolls back into your head.
go into the kitchen and see what's going on. Maybe if I help him he will make some ice cream for me.
You go into the kitchen. it is a mess of tables, ovens, firepits, cabinets, counters, hanging pots and pans, strings of sausage, iceboxes sinks, and stoves. It takes a minute to process the cacaphonic imagery. At first, you don't recognize the source of the voice from before, but as your mind processes, identifies, sorts, and filters the input, you notice an unusual thing - something like a seven foot tall tree standing near a corner of the next kitchen room over. Its six radially placed limbs wave in intricate patterns. You realize after a minute that those are arms, and that is not a tree, but some kind of flesh being. It is currently stooped low, and a few of the arms are dipping out of your sight and returning laden with dishwear, which it is depositing on a counter hastily. Another limb is stirring a pot, and a third is stacking trays on the table that lay directly between the being and yourself. It seems not to have noticed your arrival.
How basic are we talking here? Simple words, abstract concepts? Regardless, here's the message I want to get across:
"Clunkers = Friend. Will help."
Once that message has been sent, get back to work booting myself up.
That's good enough. (6) You send your message. You receive a startled flurry of images in response as you jerk suddenly into powered mode. Most of the images are deleted instantly by the transition, but you get a clear image of a "Liar Bird" who claimed to "Help," and anotehr image of a skeptical, yet thoughtful face. The face has no recognizable features - it's just a kind of mental
emoji Heiroglyph denoting wary optimism.