A sweet scent slithers through the air as, for the first time, the gods awaken. Before them lays a world, unknown and perhaps wonderous, perhaps mundane. Even as they break their daze and solidify into this plane, something feels deeply wrong. The world is not as solid as it should be, and getting a foothold is truly impossible. You know instinctively your time here will be short, and then, you will drift back into your inner dream realms. At least until you can struggle back to the surface of your consciousness to take in the breath of fresh air that this world provides. Aurum and The LibrarianFrom the sand two beings arise together, a swirl of sand and earth shaking the trees around them as they pull themselves from the earth. One pulls in driftwood from the nearby beach as they coalesce into a corporeal form, the other melts the sand around themselves until they are a glyph covered crystal. In only a few moments, the twin gods Aurum and Librarian are born into the world.
In only a few moments after their birth, the world made itself known to them. Two suns aloft in the sky made for a rather bright day, one larger and white, while the other a dim purple color, which failed to so much as tinge the clarity of the first. Though, little of this light managed to fall directly on the deities, as they found themselves beneath a dense canopy. Only shards of greenish light penetrated into the twilight of the forest floor. Smells of earth and moisture swirled into their newly formed nostals, the first smells of many the gods will discover. And then, then came the sounds. Birds, unseen, but nearby sing songs of their arrival, a chorus of chirps and long deep notes interspaced by other creatures. The beating of beetles upon the tree trunks, the buzz of flying insects big and small, and the skurrying of mammals add to the sycophancy of the jungle. Then, another sound joined the singing, it was not rhythmatic, nor was it pleasant. It was some kind of horrible screaming.
A strange creature, bipedal and skin as green as the leaves themselves, was being devoured by a plant of such unorthodox design that perhaps to call it a plant is a disservice to the entire taxa. A stench of wrongness permeates the area as the newborn gods look upon the tangle of leaves and branches. The poor greenskin melts slightly and is torn into bloody chunks where the melting is most prevalent, having weakened whatever internal biology held the poor thing together withers. In only a few moments, the deed is done and the being is dead. The plant thing turns a head, or perhaps a buttox, in your direction and a hissing noise emanates from a hidden orifice before the creature scurries away.
In time, your senses spread out to the hex you’re upon. There are a vast number of plants and animals in the region, most of them seem mundane from the perspective of a divine, but perhaps fantastical to a mortal soul. Oddly enough, you do not directly sense the creature which you had seen, only a general feeling of wrongness in a few areas. The greenskins are of interest however, living solitary lives among the trees, they seem clever, though not entirely beastial as the jungle cats and the tree boars do, at least, your helpers seem to think so.
Vahranis and MalayaThe ground shakes and the gravel grinds as two beings drag themselves up from beneath the stone and the soil. A hand plunges upwards into the air, followed by another, yet neither brace against the stone as the body of Malaya rises from the earth, hands to forever be extended towards the sky in an embrace of the distant stars above. While Malaya is gilded and bronze, shimmering in the light, her twin is as equally ostentatious. Clad in armor, ornate and flanged, Vahranis pulls himself from the earth, rubble and root sliding off his armor as easily as water through a mountain stream. Together, the twin gods Vahranis and Malaya look out upon the world around them.
They see trees abound, thick of wide leaves and limber of lumber. Some bear small fruits of a pinkish coloration, just turning now from the pale green of an unripe past. Critters of size too small to count, to beasts of sizable constitution roam the woods.
Boarbears, symphony birds, gilded snakes, among others can be seen nearby. There is little wildlife nearby. Though the mountains behind them have some life upon them, the smell of rot waifs down the slopes towards the fledgling gods. A cave of sorts seems to be the source of the miasma.
Though nearby, to the north, a small gathering of humanoids can be seen. Long armed and dexterous of finger, they meander along the edge of the forest, picking the fruits from branches with their limber limbs. It appears they live nearby, judging from the leaf thatch hovels that can be spotted in a clearing. A few seem to have sharpened sticks, though it seems they are fewer than one would expect given the amount of dangerous animals in the area.
A slight twang, or perhaps a beep of some kind, can be felt in the air. It seems you are not entirely alone, though nothing close enough for your senses to detect.
VorakA rumbling in the earth wakes you as your form into a metalic sphere and claw your way to the surface, pushing stone and earth aside, bursting into the open air with force enough to propel you upwards. As you linger for a moment at the apex of your jump, you see treetops abound ahead of you, and an outcropping of mountains behind you. Beyond the trees lays plains for as far as your eyes can see.
You land, agily, upon to the slope of the mountain. As you scan your surroundings more thoroughly, wildlife seems abundant. Horned mountain goats, burrow-birds, rubble slimes, and so on. Though, it seems there are significantly less that one would expect. The forest below has a fair abundance of life, but similarly, it seems sparser than you would expect. Most notably, there is an unhealthy smell in the air. You lift up one of your metalic spikes, and there is a deep crack in the ground, of which the smell drifts upwards from. It smells of bone rot and soured fermentation.
Seemingly unaffected, you notice some stout mortals nearby. Hairy to a fault they are, curly orange-brown hair covering their entire bodies, with long locks and on some of them, beards, long and glorious. In shallow caves they dwell, avoiding ones which stretch too deep into the mountain’s bowels. They wear trinkets of bone and meat, often upon the head or woven into the beards.
KruppCold. Ice. Snow. Wind. Your eyes slowly flicker to life as they spontaneously combust. Black sludge pours out of your mouth as you wake from your slumber. Bones of all kinds are clustered around you. Some are parts of you, others are not. You don’t know how you know which are which, but instinctively, you know.
You feel as though you've been here before. There is a familiarity to this place, a strange similarity that somehow resonates into your bones as you piece yourself together. It feels old, as if it wasn’t only frozen in ice, but frozen in time as well. But you, you are new, old is something new to the new who is you too.
In time you remember to look up and see your surroundings in full for the first time. Snow, white, ice, also white, sky, white, with a hint of grey. For as far as you can see, you are the only speck of black in an endless flurried expanse of white. Some of the white moves, a bundle of snow. It shakes, and a yak emerges from beneath. Then another bundle shakes and another, until you see several dozen yaks nearby. Or perhaps they’re bison, hard to say. In the distance, caribous wander in a herd across the ice, they’re going somewhere, though where, you cannot be certain. This place is cold, and harsh, but even so, it seems you are not alone.
The One With Many and No NameThe first thing you hear is the cracking of stone, followed by a dull beating drumbeat. After a time it stops and you fall asleep again. When you awake, your crustacean-like face looks out over some hills, facing a lake, or perhaps an ocean, it’s hard to tell, having never seen either. The beating of that strange drum fades from your mind, a dream, distant and fades quickly now that you’re awake. You shake and skitter and brush off your stoney womb, leaving an imprint of your body behind you in the stone. Looking to the sky, you see there are two suns, though one hides behind some fluffy clouds.
Turning your attention to the hills, they are covered in deep grasses. As the wind blows in from across the ocean, you observe an interesting sight as the waves from the ocean crash into the shore, the wind blows the grasses at the same time, and the wave appears to continue across the plains, until it hits the lake, and continues on once more as water.
It is difficult to see much life here. There are of course large animals, a strange yak (or maybe a bison, impossible to tell really) herd together and roam the hills. Foxes hunt mice, and mice hunt the insects. It’s rather a beautiful area.
You hear a horn in the distance, and bisonyaks turn to flee, stampeding past and around you in an exciting display of noise and fury. One goes down, a sharpened stick protruding from it’s side. A gaggle of bipedal monkeys, hairless and weird, gather around it and cheer. They cut into it with jagged rocks, and try to break it apart quickly. It’s not until you see the creature that you understand why. A big thing it is, eyeless with large nostrils and teeth as large as a mans arm, rushes forwards from the grass sea, it’s six legs rushing forward in weird rhythmic motions. The mortals make a run for it, though, three are eaten before the beast scoops up the buffalo. The entire time you had this feeling that something strange was afoot, but it wasn’t until the beast had departed that you realized what it was. It made no sound. No rushing of feet, no crunching of bones between the teeth, no hot breath of murder. It was unnervingly silent.
KapeshIt is dark when you awake, and the world is quiet. You look around and it is without fail, darker than you could have imagined. You wait for a moment, still quiet, still dark. After a while, you begin to walk. You carry on like this for quite a while, walking, carrying a corpse you woke up in. It keeps you company.
Eventually, you hit a wall. You turn to the right, you hit a wall. You walk back the way you came, you hit a wall. In all directions you find a wall, tired and without a way forward, you rest. For a moment, you sleep.
When you awake, there is a strange light upon you. You are in a cave, but as you look up, the setting sun shines directly upon you. Finally, you are free. Rushing out into the sunlight, you see an empty world before you, stone planes, dotted with straggly bushes lay out before you as you look out from the mountain. Life here is scarce and harsh. Roaming armadillos graze occasionally on the twiggy plants and patches of grass. Birds of a grey color hide amongst the rocks and the craigs. Pebble snakes slither in the ravines. Occasionally an ibex can be seen. The mountain is not much better, hosting goats, mormonts, and rock crabs, but still vegetation is rare. Much more common are the bones, piles of them don't the landscape, and others are behemoth in size. Then there are the tar pits, which are perhaps the source of the many bones.
As night falls, you turn back to the shelter of your cave, but as you look back the way you came, it is a solid rock face, just another wall in your way.
NoxussWarm is the blanket you find yourself in. It swathes you in it's embrace, surrounded on all sides. For a long time you doze. The twilight around you dims, and grows, over and over. A deep orange at it's brightest, and the sound is the worst, but eventually it subsides.
Until someday, it becomes far too warm and bright for you to remain in your comfortable sleep. Roused by a flurry of angry stone and roiling water, you leave your place of rest until the earth calms itself. Rising up, you find something new, a barrier of sorts, beyond which another sea, this one of air.
Around you look, the water is full of strange life here. Rich in algea, fish and corals and crustaceans are abundant, some even live bear your resting place you think, hard to tell now where it is. They roam, living off the angry smoke of the earth beneath the waves. Yet there is also an island of black stone and grey sand, it is more barren. Few large creatures live there. Some small porcine creatures, a few charred plants for them to stave off starvation, lizards lounging near the warmth. It is a harsh place indeed. Though when you turn to return to your slumber, you cannot find from whence you came, only the water and island, no matter how hard you look.
ChromaticwingThe clouds themselves were the womb in which you coalesced, soft and cool, white and whispy, they bathed you in light moisture as your wings unfolded for the first time. You look about and it’s white for as far as your newly formed eyes can see. For a long moment you linger there, but a strange force begins to act on you, and you begin to fall.
It is not until you land among the trees of a tropical jungle that you realize something important, you have no idea how to fly. Though, this is no matter to you, the fall was exhilarating and the landing was smooth enough, at least by divine standards. The demolished trees and crushed animals may disagree, or would if they were still capable of breathing.
Around you thousands of flowers bloom in a kaleidoscope of colors. Their numerous floral scents collecting into a heavy perfume which permeates the area. Tree shrimp chitter and chirp as they go from flower to flower, while sloths gnaw slowly at the leaves and fruit. As you look around yourself, you see felines of a speckled variety, frogs of color and shape which seems to change with each instant, and lastly, a dozen sets of eyes.
Staring at you, hidden within the foliage are some dark green skinned humanoids, yellow and reflective of eye, and strange of hair. About half have bald spots atop their head, giving them a strange black crown above the ears, while the others only grow hair on the very tops of their heads, but it is long and flowing or densely braided. As soon as they realize you’ve noticed them, they scatter. You think to follow them, but before you can move, a cold chill runs down your spine.
You look west towards the mountains, something lingers there, staring back at you. After a moment, it disappears and the feeling of dread abides.
YumeYou don’t remember well the dream before you awoke. You vaguely recall winds, and clouds, storms and rain. There’s an odd almost clear memory of a field of bubbles, but the more you try to picture it, the fuzzier it becomes. No, the first thing you truly remember is the smell of rot, and the sound of a toad. It was beside you when you coalesced into your current swirling form; a small storm of light and water, purple and new. The toad croaked, a loud ugly sound before plopping into the water and disappearing from sight. You still wonder whether that was a welcome or a warning.
The endless swamp is a place most unforgiving. The tar pits mix with the poison ponds and release a gas most noxious. While the life here is twisted, trees which cling to life as they rot away from within. Beetles which gnaw upon what little green survives. Fish seemingly made of teeth bite and spit, while eels slither out onto the mud.
Yet in other places it is more pleasant. Willows grow wild and white in the night, and the tree shrimp grow fat and juicy on the gobgob fruits. Crocodiles and birds with long stilts of legs play a deadly game of cat and mouse. Indeed, for being as toxic as it is, this place often has a serenity to it that seems to draw one in.
XelathanLong the longsnake did slumber beneath the waves. Among dark and damp the beast did sleep, cradled by a crevice on the sea floor. No light bothered you here, no sounds made themselves known to you, it was quiet, it was pleasant, it was perfect. Who knows how long you resided in that ravine after you coalesced, or when you coalesced, or even when your sleep was disturbed. Yet, in time, you were disturbed so. When it comes to infinity, all things are possible, and you have around you the infinity of time; forever. And perhaps forever there you would have stayed, if one had not drawn the attention of the fates towards your continued slumber.
Indeed, with all possibilities possible across an infinitude of forever, perhaps the idea that you had forever is a flawed prospect, as eventually, with all possible possibilities, you will come across the possibility that you lose out on forever. Whether that has or hasn’t happened as of now, one can never be certain.
Though, something did change. A sweet smell entered your nostrils and rose you from your sleep. It was a tantalizing aroma, metallic, sweet, and sanguine. The scent of blood in the water. Blue and shimmering, you rose from the depths of that crevice and found a world of light and wet violence. The bay itself was larger than one could see, though here in the open water there was still life. Sharks of a hunger most familiar to you create that sweet sweet smell with the help of smaller weaker creatures. Tiny plants and little creatures devour eachother, and sometimes themselves, all in the sake of continued existence. In pursuit of the infinity of time, or perhaps as a rout against the cessation of existence. Curiously, you try the same, taking a shark in your maw and producing the aroma that you had seen them produce in the same manner. It was heavenly, not only the smell, but the sensation of taste. The mechanical action of your body brought you great joy, only to fade into a dim satisfaction when the moment had passed. You had no need for sustenance, yet you had a deep need to devour again. More, you must have more, you must always have more. As you swim off in search of that wondrous taste, you lose sight and some recollection of that quiet perfect place you had once called home.
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Topic: Between the Mountains IC (Read 4266 times)