+- Eagle Time (https://eagle-time.org)
+-- Forum: Cool Shit You Can Do (https://eagle-time.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=4)
+--- Forum: Forum Games (https://eagle-time.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=1)
+---- Forum: Grand Battles (https://eagle-time.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=15)
+---- Thread: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 6: Tidal Cove] (/showthread.php?tid=667)
Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 4: Misty Swamp] - whoosh! - 06-20-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by whoosh!.
Aic slammed knee-deep into a swamp, splattering water of markedly questionable quality over several eldritch zombies and Kalevi. Being utterly unfazed by the change in scenery, Aic didn't hesitate and finished sweeping her chainsaw upwards with a glorious growl of machinery. Kalevi fired his shots and, swinging around Aic, shafted the newly dismembered head of the monster at another one of its kind. Then, in unison, the two of them leapt backwards away from the zombies. They stumbled a little in the muck – Aic almost being tipped over by the weight of her weapon – until Kalevi placed a hand on Aic's arm.
“What?” She turned to him, tensed.
“Look. Look at them.”
In the stillness of the moment it became painfully obvious that while, in their last locale, the zombies had been more than willing to oblige the pair's bloodlust, they were not doing as such now. Aic stepped tentatively towards one, wincing slightly at the cold squelching of the mud on her bare feet. It did not react. She lay her chainsaw down in the cack of the swamp a little reluctantly and turned back to the creature. Apprehensively, she peered into its eyes.
Nothing. It stared straight ahead.
Aic reached into her pocket and drew out a spare magazine for her lost gun. After slipping out a few cased bullets and briefly polishing them on her sleeve, she lifted one up to its eye level. Slowly she moved the bullet closer, until it was almost touching it. Suddenly she flicked aside, and it landed a few feet away with a muted splash. Throughout it all the eyes of the test subject did not move in the slightest.
“Odd. The brain doesn't appear to be engaged,” she mused. Aic took a few steps around it, noting the rigid stance. “It only seems to be still standing because the muscles have completely seized up.” She glanced across at Kalevi, who seemed distinctly more unsettled by the ruined bodies of his colleagues standing around. “What do you think?”
“This is... fuck, this is weird.”
“Yeah?”
“Let's leave. Now.”
“Now? But I'm not finished testing,” she replied, her apparent sincerity betrayed only by the faint smile that touched her lips. Ignoring Kalevi she rounded on her chosen test subject once more and looked up at the unmoving face. Stifling a laugh, she placed a hand on its chest and gently pushed it away from her.
Agonisingly slowly it tipped backwards, then fell much faster into the swamp with a satisfying spray of mud. Unable to hold back any longer she collapsed into a fit of giggles. Just when she thought she might have regained control fresh laughter bubbled up, and all the while she silently watched herself in abject horror.
Suddnely, Kalevi grabbed her by the arm and yanked her round to face him. He was pale, but he was furious. He thrust the muck-slathered chainsaw into her unresisting hands.
“I have had enough of this shit, Aic. I don't where I am, my friends have just been turned mad and then lobotomised, and now you're acting like another fucking lunatic like the cherry on the crazy cake,” Kalevi seethed. “Okay? So when I say we're leaving, that is exactly what we're going to fucking do.”
Aic had stopped laughing, and felt only the morbid dread that she'd refused to acknowledge before. She dropped her gaze and clung to her weapon.
“I'm sorry, Kal.”
She didn't want to look to see what his response would be, so she just let him lead her away from the still bodies, trailing her chainsaw behind her.
Eventually they disappeared from sight, partially hidden by the purple fog that swirled through the air, and partially by the trees that reached towards a dull sky. Around the still people nothing moved.
Nothing, that is, except for the fog. But it would be easy to discount that. The fog was not alive. It had no presence. If not for the faint mind-affecting properties of the stuff it would be not be worth mentioning in such detail at all.
However, as it turns out, when a soul is ripped from a human to make place for other functions – say, for instance, to be controlled by a single eldritch being, to have increased cannibalistic desires and so forth – and then the source of those functions is destroyed, the empty shell left behind is a fertile place. You have almost boundless potential, but no drive or soul to direct it.
And, hypothetically, were some substance of faint mind-affecting abilities to come into prolonged contact with this incredible potential, it would not be too surprising if the two were to merge in some way. Perhaps, for example, the substance would gain the intelligence and presence afforded by a human shell, but still retain the paranoia-inducing nature and single nature of the substance. A hive-mind of plague-carriers, bearing insanity instead of a disease of the flesh.
In unison, the crowd of still people turned to stare at where Aic and Kalevi had vanished.
And then they began to walk.
Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 4: Misty Swamp] - Schazer - 06-30-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.
Bear and the insufferable little upstart marine waited on the inner outskirts of Holm, a term which made much more sense to the Countess after she'd been given a tour of the place en route to... the inner outskirts.
Holm was a sizeable, sprawling village, which those with a disposition favouring geographical humour might've posited should've been named "Atoll" instead. The settlement was a chain of buildings and raised huts and connecting walkways, which encircled a patch of swamp large enough to harbour a bit of that uppity human's hated fog in it.
The portions of the patchwork town that were built on dry(er) land had been extended outward, with more land raised from the mist through feats of magic or engineering. The citizens weren't fussy, though the Countess had to wonder why construction extended outward, rather than inward. Bear's explanations were less than helpful, and his companions constant pleas for the beast to "shut up for like, one moment, seriously" didn't help either. More boardwalks meandered away from the town like spidery rays, connecting neighbouring settlements with the hub of the Swamp.
Only one ray spidered inward; a narrow, disused strip of rot that made the Countess ask herself if this mist wasn't corrosive somehow. She'd still been denied a chance to clear off the swamp-muck, and felt about as pleasant as her movements were unhampered. She glanced back, was offered only a dismissive wave and an encouraging wave of a paw which was shortly smacked down, then rattled her slow way into Heartholm.
Slow being the operative word. Her coil-cannon was almost certainly deadweight without Ouroborite juice to keep it sparking; and her limbs in general had automatically adjusted to properly carry the weight. Exquisite intricacy for the practicalities of being a metal-eating abomination, and so forth. The Countess paused after what felt like a sufficiently torturous length of uninteresting time trekking down the walkway, then reached around with her unweighted arm and prised the bomb off. It stayed stuck to her hand, the mildly paralysing pulses it sent up the Countess' arm pleasantly reminiscent of something's heart beating.
She would've kept it there, if it weren't for the fact she would've missed the surgically precise movements an unscrambled metal hand could confer. The Countess settled for sticking it to the coils on her shoulder in the vain hope they'd jolt back to life, when the fog uncoiled to reveal a shrine.
It wasn't any ramshackle hut of twigs and mud, either, like the rest of Holm that the Countess had seen.
Please, come in, come in.
The Countess glanced over her shoulder, on some kind of instinct that didn't really illuminate her situation any. Just more dreary swamp. With a trepidation she would've liked to blame on mud jamming her movements, the agent entered.
Hello.
There was some kind of tapeworm, of the disturbingly enormous variety. Pale in the gloom of the windowless little crypt, it snaked out of nowhere and inscribed a graceful, horrifying arc around the Countess. She swiped an ineffectual talon through its eyeless face, but the illusion was polite enough to restrain its laughter in her head. To the disconcertment of the Countess, it still sounded amused.
No more trouble, you hear me, little one? Or I'll put it in your head, here and now, to march into the mad marshes and never come back.
"I mean no harm," the Countess replied, a little too quickly.
And yet, murmured the tapeworm, tracing a sinuous path in the air around the amalgam, you are too distracted by matters elsewhere to celebrate your liberation, are you not?
"It was… a friend of mine."
I see. There was a pause. Were they perhaps initiating some means of escape from your battle?
"… Perhaps. I don't have any wish to discuss it with a stranger."
A fan of glass lenses stared levelly back at the telepath, who eventually swayed in a shrugging kind of way, settling for an apologetic hum.
My kind had no need for names, but others christened me Hitchcock.
"Countess. I still don't understand why I was escorted here-"
I, interrupted Hitchcock, cutting a quick dash around the Countess again, before dipping his head in a little bow, am one of the founders of Holm. The original escapists, if you will. Though most of my fellow contestants deeply mistrusted me – perhaps it is universal, the untouchable sanctity of one's mind and thoughts – one earned my trust, and for him and in his memory alone I continue in the duty he assigned me.
The amalgam just stood, and listened. This was the sort of thing the Controller would've just love to hear about.
His name, little one, was Donavan, and with his foresight he dragged we four survivors of the battle to work together in our escape.
Our attempt was successful, but we were all aware that without concealment, the Grandmasters would hunt us down. And thus, my role that continues today. For I am Chamaelanimus, out of sight, out of mind.
"I'm afraid I don't recognise the name."
Well, of course not! That is our ability – to erase perceptions of ourselves from the minds of others.
"And you've encompassed all of the Swamp's inhabitants with this power of yours?"
Indeed. When Donavan passed away, he recommended a final safeguard – though the Swamp's residents know they are safe and know that attempts to contact beyond endanger us all, there is no need for dangerous specifics.
"Wait." The Countess raised a claw, tittering (or chattering) a little. "You don't mean to say you'll infect me with these ideas of yours, leaving me nodding and smiling over something I haven't a shred of choice over? What about – about my friend? What becomes of him?"
I mean no real malevolence about it, I assure you. Hitchcock shrugged. This is merely my duty, defending the village my oldest friend fought so hard to bring about. There is no need for concern, Countess. The Swamp is a pleasant enough home, and highly cosmopolitan considering its immigrants. If we are fortunate, Countess, we will not have to meet again. Good day.
The Countess was about to protest, but found no good reason to. She simply stood alone in the middle of a dingy, stone cubicle, and outside (and returning to Holm) suddenly seemed like a much better place to be. She wanted to contact the Controller; get out of this backwater. She knew that was a very bad idea.
She eventually crawled her mired way back to the outskirts of Holm, where Bear was waiting.
"Bear, dearest. Do you know what I need now, more than anything?"
"Elucidations?"
"A wash, dear. Desperately."
"Pursuance presenting," smiled the shaggy creature. The Countess proceeded to pursue him, presently.
Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 3: Las Orbitas] - MaxieSatan - 07-03-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by MrGuy.
Holly tentatively knocked on the thick steel door, incongruous against the wooden huts of the town. The knock echoed loudly, and the elf looked back and forth, frowning slightly; she peered once again at the slip of paper, which Ruby had clearly written “Rolf Grellend, 24 Peat Blvd” on when “Cherry” had come to her with the news that she was having trouble finding a place to stay. After a few moments, a short man in a labcoat and goggles opened the door, staring up at her. “Well, hello. Wasn’t expecting you.”
Holly rolled her eyes. “Oh, a scientist dwarf. That’s new.”
“You’d certainly be the authority on defying stereotypes, miss haughty elf.” He turned and began walking back into the hut, as Holly winced. Way to go. You managed to go twenty whole minutes without being a bitch. God, is it really so hard? He beckoned, and she shuffled in after him. Several odd devices crackled and sparked throughout the halls, several apparently unfinished and none with an obvious functionality. “Who sent you, hm?”
“O-oh. That’d be, um, Ruby LaReed?”
He grinned. “Ah, Ms. LaReed. Do thank her for those diamonds she acquired for me the other day. Needed to fix up a saw, see.”
Holly blinked and rubbed the back of her neck. “Um, yeah, hahaha! Absolutely. Completely. Um, what exactly did she send me here for?”
He took out a rag and polished his goggles as he approached a large tube with a thin coating of white dust lining the bottom. “You can transform emotions into matter, can you not? It happens that I could use something along those lines. If you’d just stick your hands in there, please.” He gestured to two gloves embedded in the tube, so that someone could place their hands in from the outside.
Holly tentatively did as implied, and the man pressed a few buttons on a nearby panel. The tube began filling up with mist, and Holly began to feel an increasing sense of dread. “What exactly should I be doing?”
He fiddled with a dial, adjusting his goggles, and then waved his hand dismissively. “Solidify it. I’m curious what’ll happen.”
She bit her lip and slowly reached out to the mist. Slowly, a thick, curved, pitch-black vine materialized in the center of the tube. Holly flinched backwards and attempted to stop, but the vines kept growing, evidently flourishing in the environment of the mist. They undulated slightly, ambient light gleaming off its leaves, extending out in almost-but-not-quite-symmetrical patterns that made the pathomancer feel vaguely unnerved. The scientist grinned and approached the elf, giving her a hearty slap on the back.
“Very good, there, very good. Not quite what I expected, but it can almost certainly be weaponized. Defensive purposes, of course.” He dug around in an icebox in the corner of his lab, then tossed a sandwich to Holly before beginning to chew on one himself. “You can only imagine what’d happen if a Grandmaster showed up. So, I’ve been working on a bioweapon that can take one down.”
Holly blinked. “Okay, well… thanks for the sandwich. You mind getting me a place to stay?” He responded by nodding and turning back to the vine, examining it intently.
“Yes, yes, all taken care of. Just go to the hotel two blocks down—“ he pointed—“and they’ll get a nice room for you.” Holly nodded and took her leave, closing the massive steel door behind her. The dwarf, now satisfied that he was alone, sauntered down the hallway and unlocked an even larger and thicker door, pushing it aside to reveal a room full of chained-up people. All of them were completely mad from the influence of the mist, which was the only thing that allowed Rolf Grellend to maintain faith that he was not evil. He was helping others, after all, and if that meant that he had to use test subjects once in a while, better ones that already had their brains broken anyway—soon, they would no longer be a threat to society, and they’d be out of their misery.
He headed over to one, an oracle, who was crumpled in a corner muttering to herself about buzzing and screeching or some nonsense. He would be quite glad to be rid of her. Not at all like that child—that was the one he had regretted, the one that made him realize the regrettable truth, that his ingenuity simply could not proceed without sapient guinea pigs. He gently pressed a syringe of tranquilizer into her jugular, unchained her, and dragged her down the hall.
Grellend grabbed a gas mask off of a nearby table and secured it tightly to his face, then opened the tube. A bit of mist wafted out, but not too much, and none of the vines escaped; he was able to fairly quickly toss the oracle in there, as she halfheartedly screamed and babbled all the way, before finally sealing her in. Sure enough, the vines coiled around her, and she slowly stopped. Once that was done, she stared into the distance, before finally tearing at herself. After ten minutes of this, she made the transition from a horribly bloody and scratched-up woman to a corpse, crumpled against the floor.
He nodded solemnly. This would do for stage one of the weapon. Combined with the draining device he’d perfected, the paralyzing venom of that nice scorpion down the way, and a hearty dose of anti-magical gemstones (courtesy of Ms. LaReed) crumbled to powder, there was little to stop him—or anyone—from killing a Grandmaster, at least in theory.
Of course, theories are rarely if ever perfect, especially when they’ve only just been come up with, still a vague idea coalescing in the dreamer’s mind. And if the dwarf Rolf Grellend had remembered this fact, there is the slightest chance that there might have been more survivors—but only the slightest.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Holly was not happy with kitchen work. She considered herself above it, and would have much preferred to be performing, say, psychology work, or fighting in some sort of arena. However, the arena had been long since closed down due to collateral damage and encouraging “violent activities” which were deemed counterproductive to society as a whole. So now, she was stuck doing dishes for a donkey—a donkey, of all things—just to have three squares a day and a place to sleep.
She supposed it could be worse. She could be doing something far worse, such as… well, cleaning out sewers or stables wasn’t really an option, given the location. The more she thought about it, the more trouble she had, and she started wishing she could simply do some odd jobs. I could have majored in constructional alchemy. Could be making intricate little figurines, or beds, or something. Instead I’m stuck with clumsy rock spikes and creepy-ass red vines. She saw the jerry-rigged stove’s feeble flame begin to peter out, and too impatient to bother relighting it the hard way (it had taken her half an hour the first time, and she didn’t want to go through with it again), she simply stoked it with a wave of her hand and a supply of her rage.
Having been vented thus, she felt considerably better. Hey, I’m alive, right? And I’ve managed not to snap and kill anybody. She thought for a moment, then appended In town, at least. She shrugged and slowly stirred the mixture of vegetables in the pan. Actually, I could get used to living here. No loss for fascinating people. Besides, this is my chance to finally make it up to Algernon.
She scowled. …He’s alive, and he’s here. Must mean the rest are too, most of ‘em at least. Good god, I hope I don’t see a one of them. She shuddered to even contemplate the ticking of clockwork; bile rose in her throat as she considered the cold synthesized voice of Acacia, and wondered how desperate she must have been to consider that love. She grabbed a bottle, and barely resisted the temptation to smash it into the counter. That won’t help. Just have to stay calm. If there’s any problems, I can handle them, because I’m Cherry now.
She blinked, and for a brief moment, she even contemplated her life up to that point, her life of brief flings and indiscriminate chaos-sowing and general lack of close acquaintances. She quickly turned her thoughts away, back to the here and now. I’m Cherry now, and Cherry has friends to help her.
Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 4: Misty Swamp] - MalkyTop - 07-11-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.
Night was a time for sleep.
For some, it was restless sleep, sleep that tossed and turned, filled with uneasy fears about giant snakes and guns. For others, it was a comfortable sleep, a confident sleep that came from the knowledge that not many would mess with giant snake-gunslingers, even when sleeping.
Night was a time for sleep. For the majority, anyways.
There were plenty of reasons for any individual of such a diverse community to be up at night. Such an individual might be an un-re-undead, lumbering about, fueled by insanity. Such an individual might be one of thousands of ravenous mutant bugs (though not for long). Or one may happen to stay up late for a job. Or happen to be nocturnal. Or both.
The watchmen didn’t really patrol inside the village, but around it. After all, there were many unscrupulous beings wandering about in the swamp, more likely than not out there because of the villagers themselves. If they found their way back, they probably wouldn’t react rationally. It was one of the reasons they were turned out, in any case. So the watchmen made their rounds, up and down the wooden paths.
Niko blinked his large eyes and twitched his head around, reacting to every little sound, though he really expected nothing. His partner, Anti, was about four times his size and not as adorable, which was a subject of many a nighttime conversation. Never seriously.
“Gotta ad-a-admit it, Anti, th-the girls spend more time wi-w-with m-m-muh-me more.”
“Yeah. And they’re all about ready to go to sleep when you come out. That last one nodded off so hard, her head hit the table twice ‘fore she noticed.”
Niko gave a chittering chuckle in response to Anti’s gravelling banter before suddenly twitching his head towards the side.
Anti knew enough to know that this wasn’t just the usual tic twitch. “What’s up?” he asked, glancing in the same direction is partner was glancing towards.
“S-s-something s-sorta s-s-strange,” Niko shot back, rubbing at his snout. “Um, um, doesn’t really s–s-sm-smell good.”
Instinctively, Anti pushed himself in front of his smaller companion, glaring suspiciously into the dark swamp. After a few seconds, he could hear something too. It was a sloshing sound, perhaps the sound of someone trying to run through the muck. Worryingly enough, succeeding. Worryingly enough, getting closer…
A thin, gaunt body suddenly burst forth and pushed itself onto Anti. The large watchman, however, was easily able to toss it aside, back into the swamp muck, where it landed with a screech. Niko, in the meantime, had scampered a bit away from all the excitement, having instead opted to watch from afar.
From there, he could see the creature try to get up again only to be suddenly inhibited by a caved-in chest. He could see another one coming that Anti kicked away. He could see the crowd of gaunt, shrieking bodies closing in. He could see Anti still struggling successfully against them, but with a new look in his eye. The look had come on gradually, but was very noticeable.
And soon, Anti was shrieking along with the rest of the mob, his movements more frenzied, his attacks more spread out. He had a weapon. Really, just a thick stick, but certainly something to help against the beings. Anti never even tried to use it.
Niko suddenly rushed towards the group again, only to stop when a new sound came into focus. A hungry, buzzing sound. The group of gaunt…somethings moved on, hastier than Niko thought necessary. Anti tried to keep up and, of course, failed.
There were quite a few things that Niko never wanted to see in his life. His partner, or really, anybody getting eaten up by giant bugs found itself well up on the top of that list.
He couldn’t help but watch and he stayed frozen when the swarm continued to feed on fleeing carcasses. He couldn’t help but listen to the dying screams.
And suddenly, he curled up on all fours, turned, and ran.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It turned out Algernon had no idea how to help out in a tailor shop. Mostly what he was supposed to do was sweeping floors, measuring customers, and jotting down orders while the tailor himself (not actually a spider, but could only be described as a ‘spidery-thing’) worked in the back. Mostly what he ended up doing was eavesdropping. It was very easy, especially when you have to be uncomfortably close to types of beings you have never seen before with a measuring tape in your hand.
“And he ran in waking up the whole town,” said one, presumably male. Algernon paused. He didn’t really remember waking up at all.
Neither did the other customer. “Jus’ tell me if it’s true, ‘kay?”
“Not like anybody’s going out there to check, right? If Anti got eaten or whatever, anybody else could too.”
“Eaten by what?” Algernon forced back an impulse to shoot customer no. 2 a smile as he measured the length of customer no. 1’s appendages.
“He said it was monster bugs.”
If there was any equivalent in tape-measuring to doing a spit-take, Algernon would have certainly done so. But he had no idea how to do that, so he had to settle for tensing a little, his mind going quickly over what Cherry had told him just yesterday.
A bunch of really large bugs…and monster bugs…both apparently ridiculously dangerous…
Algernon found himself extremely jittery right until the tailor let him go. Immediately, he headed back to his hotel to get his backpack. He actually didn’t remember what was inside, but it surely would be useful.
It was on his way out, though, that he ran into Galatea.
She looked like a girl he remembered from elementary school this time. The expression on her face was more of a stern elementary school teacher, though. “Where are you going?”
“Shouldn’t you be taking care of, uh, those guys?” Algernon replied guiltily, not even able to make any eye contact.
“Whatever reason you have for going out, you really shouldn’t go out. You’ve heard the news, haven’t you?”
“Yeah, sorta,” he said vaguely.
“Obviously what happened is someone incredibly dangerous arrived. We’re lucky it’s not wandering around in towns, but this really isn’t the time for anybody to go out alone.”
“What if I got someone to go with me, then?”
“Everybody’s busy with jobs to do.” Haha. Subtle. “And we’ll be especially busy now figuring out what to do with this…problem.”
“What about other towns?” Algernon suddenly blurted out.
Galatea blinked. “What?”
“Do they know?” he persisted. “I mean, they’re really going around everywhere, right? And they must have just appeared. Do they know? Because they should.”
Galatea opened her mouth before she could find the words she wanted to say, so she closed it again. Then, “You’re right…
“…But I really don’t think that—“
“You said you all’re busy. I’m the newest guy here. I’m expendable, really, and I can take care of myself, so I should go and warn others.”
It took a long moment, but Galatea said, “Alright.”
Algernon grinned at her and walked by towards the exit, but Galatea stopped him again. “I really do know what you want to do. I don’t want to sound cruel, but you really must stop,” she said harshly.
Algernon showed all the signs of listening. He simply discarded the advice immediately as he left town once more.
Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 4: Misty Swamp] - Dragon Fogel - 07-18-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.
Bear guided the Countess to a small hut. Looking inside, it appeared to be a bath-house of sorts, though several of the objects near the washtub seemed as though they would be more at home in a repair shop.
"Mechanics cleansing facility," Bear explained.
"Naturally. Given the diverse nature of this town, I suppose you have several machines that wish for a degree of privacy when handling their own maintenance."
Bear nodded, and pointed to a curtain by the hut's entryway. He walked out and turned his back to the hut.
Countess drew the curtain, and stepped into the tub.
As she cleaned out the swamp muck, Countess happened to glance at the privacy curtain. It was hardly necessary, she knew; she was less concerned about some hypothetical peeping tom with an unhealthy interest in machinery and more concerned with shutting out this unpleasant village.
She was surprised when the words began to appear on it.
Dear Countess,
Welcome to Heartholm. Given your initial experiences here, I'm sure that you haven't yet gotten to the point where you lead a happy and comfortable life in this peaceful village, and instead are filled with bitterness and spite towards this place and its inhabitants.
That's good. I need someone who hasn't been corrupted.
This is just an initial message to establish contact. We'll talk more tonight. I'll direct you to the meeting place.
Sincerely,
A friend
The message vanished from the curtain as soon as Countess read it.
***
Some distance away from the bathhouse, a being in a fedora and trenchcoat wandered along a boardwalk.
Nobody really knew anything about him; he had arrived alone, and never said anything.
He had been searched thoroughly upon arrival. Underneath his clothes, he seemed to be an ordinary human, though with unremarkable features and a face that stayed perfectly still, with a blank expression. Searching the coat itself had only revealed an envelope with a blank piece of paper inside.
They'd let him keep it. Even if it was a secret message, what possible impact could it have in this place, forgotten by everyone in the universe?
What they didn't realize was that the paper did hold a message. A message with a will of its own.
The message carefully slipped along the underside of the walkways, and hopped into its home in the trenchcoated man's pocket.
Dear Bryan,
I have a good feeling about this one.
The man could feel the message as it wrote itself. He said nothing, as he always did.
Oh, you don't like that name? Pity, I thought for sure I'd come up with a good one this time. I suppose I'll just have to keep at it.
Regardless, you could smile a little. We're going to make a new friend tonight, after all.
Sincerely,
The Message
Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 4: Misty Swamp] - Godbot - 07-26-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by Godbot.
As Algernon pressed on further into the forest, the boardwalk dwindled away into a few planks laid across the mossy ground, marking approximately where the path was supposed to be. He had already known about this from the last trip into Holly's village, but as long as he followed the path, he didn't get lost. In retrospect, it seemed like as long as there was a route for him to follow, he would get to his destination without too much trouble from the fog, even if it was just a vague impression of a path.
But last time, the boards hadn't been eaten away about a hundred feet after the boardwalk ended.
Algernon had to stop and think, but only for a moment. Galatea's warning had been clear: Don't stray off the path. But even if the shoddy trail of boards and bones was gone, he still knew the route pretty well. Sure, he had to get off the boardwalk, he reasoned, but as long as he took the route he had taken last time, he'd still be following the path. As he took a step off ragged, rotted edge of the last board, the fog moved in to curl around his ankles.
How hard could it be?
.
.
.
The next thing Algernon was aware of was something heavy prodding his head. He groaned and let his head loll to one side. What did he do to deserve this? Go away.
“Go away,” he must have mumbled, because someone hissed 'he is still alive,' and dragged him to his feet. He leaned against the tree and tried to go back to sleep. Had he been sleeping? It occurred to him that he didn't know.
He'd just blacked out. Had he made something with his memories?
“Where am I,” he started to ask, but that was obvious. He was in the swamp. It just seemed like the appropriate thing to ask after being woken up by a stranger. He settled for “How long was I out?”
“Hyu are Algernon, yes? Hyu have not been seen in village for days,” said the-
Okay, hold on.
After a moment's consideration, Algernon decided the thing talking to him rather resembled some kind of lobster centaur. The lower half of its body was unmistakably the crawly, segmented body of a giant aquatic crustacean, and its brownish carapace continued upwards to form a human-shaped torso that was similarly plated in reddish-brown. Its mandibles rippled as it spoke.
“Ve vere not expectink to see hyu, Mr. Algernon,” said the lobster centaur in some kind of Russian accent. “Ve are lookink for large insects. Hyu have been pronounced missink, maybe dead. One of several. My name is Azaz.”
Another person mentioning those monster bugs. Everyone kept talking about how the bugs had only appeared recently. Just how bad were they, if everyone knew about them the minute they showed up?
“That's- that's great, comrade,” Algernon answered, still sort of staring. Azaz was carrying a harpoon crossbow. Did they make those? And how did it pull the trigger with those big claws?
Whatever its deal was, its friends were gathering. Algernon recognized the hundred-armed man from before, along with a techie-looking fellow with some kind of metal chest plate and a variety of holographic HUDs floating around him and what appeared to be a miniature shark with the legs of a dog. It growled at him, and he immediately pressed his back against the tree again. They introduced themselves as Redmont and Voxel, respectively.
“And that's Howitzer,” Voxel smiled. “He bites.”
Azaz shot him a look the way only a lobster could. “Are hyu vell?” it asked Algernon. “Have hyu seen any insects?”
“I'm not sure,” admitted Algernon. “I feel fine, I guess. But I don't remember what happened out here.” He paused. “You said I've been out for days, right?”
The adventurer-types looked at each other. Redmont shrugged. It was a truly wondrous sight. They agreed that a few days sounded about right. “Four or five,” added Voxel.
Algernon swore quietly. Those bugs certainly would have found their way to the next villages, by now. “Why are you looking for them? The bugs, I mean.”
“Ve have not seen bugs for few days,” admitted Azaz. “Ve vere hopink bugs had moved on.”
Fair enough. “I need to get to Fernwood,” said Algernon. “Which way do I...?”
Voxel cleared his throat. “The boardwalk from Kerosene to Fernwood was eaten away about a week ago. You can only get through this fog if you know where you want to go -”
“I know,” interrupted Algernon.
“...but if there isn't a clearly marked path, then walking from Point A to the general location of Point B isn't gonna cut it,” he finished, drawing a little holographic diagram with his fingertip for emphasis. He erased it with a wave of his hand. “It takes a long time to rebuild a route between the villages when you can't just build in a straight line. Even we're using a guide rope that's tied to Kerosene's side.”
“So, the other villages don't know?” Algernon demanded.
“We'd really better go,” muttered Redmont. Azaz nodded.
“Follow rope and hyu vill find way back. Hyu vill not be able to cross swamp, and ve do not know if it is dangerous. Just go back,” it said with finality.
And with that, they were off. Algernon stopped Voxel for the guide rope. Voxel pulled the rope away rudely. “If I lose this rope, we'd all end up like you,” he said. “You can follow it just fine without holding it.” As Algernon made his way off, Voxel called after him. “We found some sort of vehicle nearby. It might be yours.”
And with that, they went their separate ways down the same guide rope. The same lifeline.
---
Redmont reached out with a few colossal arms to brush aside a dead tree. It fell into the swamp, splattering the others with muck.
“Redmont!” barked Voxel as he tried to get his staticky interfaces back under control. The hundred-armed man grinned to himself, and they pressed on. Voxel took everything so seriously. Even if that hadn't been on purpose, he was still pretty fun to mess with.
Voxel waved his hand through his combat interface, canceling unneeded processes and letting it sort itself out. A tiny blinking window remained in front of him. [irregular heat signatures] was written across the top, and below it was a list of coordinates. An unhelpful map showed their general locations.
Voxel nearly dropped his guide rope. “Guys,” he called.
“Vait,” said Azaz. The sharkdog was tugging sharply on its leash, as if trying to attack. Or get away. “Howitzer smells something.”
“Guys,” Voxel repeated. “I'm getting heat signatures all over the place.” His HUDs were full of red icons.
“Shit,” growled Redmont. He took a few steps back to join the others. They turned to guard each other's backs, but the swamp was just as foggy and silent as before. It only gradually occurred to Voxel how little of his surroundings he could actually see.
And then the shrieking started.
It hit them like a wall of pure sound. Voxel's skin crawled horribly. It was indescribable – like his scalp splitting, like razor wire digging into his skin. It hurt. The sound hurt.
Hundreds of wriggling insects the size of rats appeared out of the deep fog, hungry and scared and enraged. Before Voxel could steady his hand enough to fire an energy shot, something smooth and oily slithered across his foot and wrapped around his other ankle. He could feel hundreds of tiny legs brushing against him. He shuddered violently and staggered away, bumping into his companions. Something several feet long, like a horrible snake or a centipede was curled where his feet were. It made eye contact.
This was hell. He didn't need this.
Before either of the others could tell what was going on, Voxel was already frantically running away, stepping on insects and kicking them aside blindly. “Coward!” roared Azaz. He fired his harpoon crossbow, skewering the nearest Ouroborite. “Deserter!”
Voxel kept running, swatting aside brambles and demolishing trees with energy bolts. As long as he kept following the rope, he'd be fine. He'd be fine. The guide rope would lead him back to the village, back to Kerosene, and he'd tell them that there were insects, big ones, horrible ones, and that the others had been eaten. He was telling the truth, too – and someone needed to get out alive, to tell the others. He was doing the right thing, he was doing the right thing and he'd be fine and -
His foot landed in the muck and algae, and he staggered and nearly tripped. His combat interface went staticky again, but just for a moment.
Something brushed against his leg.
Voxel screamed – he couldn't help himself – and splashed through the swampy water to the other side. He rested against a rotten old tree and waited for his heart to stop racing. Oh god, he was a wreck, his friends were dead, and he'd abandoned them, that guy they'd sent off to follow the guide rope had probably been eaten, he really should have stolen that mech instead of letting him take it, this was worse than The Illustrious Contention, at least then everyone was human, or mostly, not those horrible crawling monsters that- that...
Oh god, something chittered. Something was chittering oh god.
But nothing was there – nothing he could see. That almost made it worse. He turned to climb the tree, telling himself that it was to get a better look at the battlefield, not to escape as quickly as possible. The rotted bark stripped away at his touch. The trunk of the tree was filled with deep crevasses, and nestled in each one of them was a bloated red larva -
He staggered backwards in horror and raised his arm. A glowing crosshair centered around his hand as he aimed an energy bolt at the infested tree. Without warning, something large and heavy and wet planted itself on his back. He screamed and tore at what had to be another of the enormous insects, trying to pull it free as it hissed and fluttered its wings. It paused to sink its barbed tail into his lower back, giving Voxel a chance to smack it off. It fell onto its back a few feet away, and he fired an energy bolt at it without a second thought. It burst open, splattering purple liquid everywhere, but he kept firing wildly, directing a few blasts of energy at the tree, but mostly just firing at the insect's carcass. It wasn't until his HUD flashed an [overheat] warning in his face and stopped firing that he realized he'd been screaming again.
He wanted to sink to the ground and curl up, but this wasn't the time for that. He had to get out of here. He needed to get out of here.
He took a few steps forward, but his legs were shaking too much, and he only made it a few feet. He automatically put out a hand to balance himself on what was left of the tree, but he pulled away with revulsion once he noticed. He broke into a run, although his back screamed in protest. The bridge was this way, it was only a little further.
The fog parted, and a clearing opened up before him, filled with water and sunlight streaming down from above -
“VOXEL,” roared Redmont.
Voxel looked up, genuinely startled. His combat interface blinked a red icon in his face. Behind it, Redmont was sunken to one knee, battered and bloody. He tore the violent little insects off with his slightly-less-than-a-hundred remaining arms. He was too exhausted to yell anything else. Azaz and Howitzer lay nearby, torn to pieces.
Was this a trick? Had he gone insane? Voxel lifted his guide rope. At the other end was -
Nothing. Just burned, frayed edges, still smoking from the energy bolt that had severed it.
Numbly, Voxel let the rope fall.
Before it hit the ground, the mutant swarm was upon him.
---
On the other side of the rope, Algernon hauled himself onto the ragged edge of Kerosene's side of the dock. Erm, boardwalk. The trip had been surprisingly short, especially with the help of his brand-new some-sort-of-vehicle. As it turned out, Voxel hadn't been vague; 'some sort of vehicle' described it about as accurately as 'bike with gear and legs,' or 'giant mechanical water strider' if you wanted to squint your eyes and attempt to get specific.
He'd figured out what to do on the way there – the hollow reed he'd found in his pocket was a pretty obvious hint to himself – but he wanted to sit and stall for just a second. Initially, he'd thought the problem of getting through impenetrable fog was impossible, but once he realized that there was no fog in the villages, it occurred to him that there was a way to just avoid the fog entirely. He rolled the reed between his fingertips for a moment.
It wasn't until he realized that he was sitting exactly where he'd started several days ago that he found the drive to slip into the murky, awful water, using the hollow reed as an improvised snorkel.
It could've been worse, he decided as he began to swim. He could've been the one stuck trying to make a bridge underwater.
A few indescribably horrible minutes of swimming, coming back up for fresh air and wishing he'd used his memories to make a proper set of scuba gear later, Algernon was at the other end of the shallow lake. He started to wipe his eyes off with his mucky sleeve and instantly regretted it. Instead, he pulled himself onto the boardwalk, rolled onto his back and slowly blinked away the water in his eyes until he could see clearly.
No guide rope on the railing.
He'd made it.
If he didn't feel like curling up and dying, he might've gotten up and cheered.
He slowly climbed to his feet, bracing himself heavily against the railing. No wonder Azaz had told him not to bother with trying to go to Fernwood. He pulled his shirt off and wrung it out, then started his journey down the boardwalk, vaguely wishing that he still had that water strider mech to do the walking for him.
---
A smallish Ouroborite fluttered its wings and alighted on the edge of the boardwalk. A strong, musky scent trail started here, and stretched into the fog. The pungent smell of the swamp and wet fabric hung around it, but the smell of meat and blood was still there, and it was still fresh. It was immediately snapped up by a much larger Ouroborite that was bloated with extra air sacs and pheromone glands. It shuffled off towards Fernwood, spewing thick purplish gas in its wake.
Ouroborous appeared from nowhere, screeching and chittering and gathering onto the path and flowing towards Fernwood and the scents of hundreds of beings as one vicious, mindless body.
Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 4: Misty Swamp] - MalkyTop - 07-28-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.
It was a shame he had to go and dirty up his new fancy-shmancy clothes again, although he had to say that he was not all that surprised, not to mention that spending most of his life in the same filthy clothes kind of made him rather used to dirt and dry muck clinging to his frame. He still felt disgusting as he squelched his way down towards the destination that he had intended to reach four or five days ago.
He was rather thankful that he still remembered what he was doing here in the first place even though the rest of the previous days were all a blur in the corner of a sad, pile of hangovers that occupied his mind and wow that was a confused metaphor. The point was, he had to warn people/see if he was too late to warn people. Which also doubled as an excuse to, um, um, to see that person, yeah, Cherry something. Right. (Phew, it would have been embarrassing if he had forgotten what he was really doing here in the first place.)
Algernon’s mind wandered fruitlessly, mostly trying not to think about all the swamp muck in his ears. He thought about how he had been missing for a while and how anybody’d react and was slightly depressed to find that, really, nobody could be said to care about him enough to be tormentuously crippled because he had disappeared from their life. Even the group of adventurers had been rather nonchalant about finding him, unconscious and alive. Well, if there existed a person back in Kerosene that legitimately cared, then at least their minds would be soothed when news of his survival meandered its way back.
Why name a town ‘Kerosene?’ It seemed like poor foreshadowing in a mediocre book. It was like naming your child ‘Easily Cut With A Sharp Implement.’
Maybe he should watch out for arsonists.
Actually, with the boardwalk out, it wasn’t likely he would be going back any time soon. It wasn’t like he wanted to go deep-swamp scuba-diving a second time. And Kerosene had the unfortunate deficiency of People Who Actually Knew What the Hell Happened to Him the Past Few Days. (There were those researcher folks, but they didn’t really seem to know much at all. Hey, actually, how were they doing now? Probably pretty good.) Folks were nice there, but not helpful with jogging his memory. Or, rather, filling holes in his memory with rubber cement. Or something.
…And that was pretty much how Algernon’s boring thoughts went like for the remaining walk. He entered the town, dirty but triumphant and bearing the smell of swamp and adventure (which smells like swamp in this case).
The first thing he did was ask where he could find Cherry at this time of day. The second thing he did was find a new person to talk to so that it didn’t seem that he had his priorities mixed up when he then informed the town of the dangers of the mysterious monster bug swarm thing.
As the news spread and inhabitants discussed by way of worried murmuring and gossip and sometimes fisticuffs, Algernon continued to squelch his way around in order to find the elf.
Cherry had apparently found herself a place to sleep and, over the course of half a week, had gained a reputation as an astonishingly good therapist. (No, no, she wasn’t manipulating people, that’s not at all what Cherry did, she was just making people happy and using her powers in a constructive manner, people don’t like being sad and she could make all that go away for a while, so it would actually be crueler to leave them to stew over their sadness, right? Right? And it wasn’t her fault that people now kept going to her and talking about their problems ever since she “talked” a guy out of suicide that one time, crazy bas—the poor unfortunate soul.) The elf glanced up when Algernon entered her room, then started a bit and reactively stood up.
“Oh, you’re back.”
Algernon pretty much ignored the feeling that Cherry wasn’t entirely overjoyed by this fact. Perhaps even still a little nervous about the idea.
“Right, so, um, I pretty much just wanted to come over so I could get you to tell me a little more about what’s going on here, but, well, I guess I should tell you something first if you haven’t heard?”
“What?”
“So you told me about some bugs that I was supposed to look out for and it turned out that there are some bugs that killed some people from where I just came from and I think they’re the same bugs you were talking about and I just told everybody outside about it because, you know, they’re deadly, so they’re trying to figure out what to do and since you’re pretty much the only one who knows anything about them, I mean maybe I used to know something about them once but I don’t, in any case, you probably could help out, maybe? Because, uh, I don’t think anybody wants to die by bugs.”
Cherry took a moment to digest the ridiculously long blather. Once she did, though, she couldn’t help but feel some sort of horrible foreboding feeling set up shop in her stomach and sell butterfly ice-cream to the locals. “I can’t,” she said.
The look Algernon gave her was somewhat accusatory, but only somewhat because it just wasn’t in the bumbling soft-head to give such a look. Mostly, his look spoke ‘childishly bewildered.’ “But, um, there’s probably going to be…panicking? And maybe people dying.”
The easiest thing to say was that she actually really didn’t know much about Ouroborous and the only encounter she had with them was quickly solved by throwing fire. Actually, the easiest thing to say would be that any encounter with them would be quickly solved by throwing fire. There had to be someone around who had some sort of fire power. Hell, she could throw fire around if people were angry enough. The things probably had other buggy weaknesses like smoke and fly swatters or something.
But somehow, sheer reluctance and denial and optimism won out, which was why she said the completely moronic sentence of: “Maybe they won’t come here?”
It didn’t really take long for that to be proven wrong, just like how every other hopeful sentences are ironically stomped on until their jelly filling covers irony’s shoes.
Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 3: Las Orbitas] - MaxieSatan - 08-02-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by MrGuy.
The rain pounded against the stone walls of Xezzelbrum Hofstot Academy, so heavily as to seem like it could break down the building at any moment. On the second floor, Holly Tallbirch nursed a drink while copying down a paper in the dim candlelight. A few other students were seated at the table with her, similarly occupied. She silently mouthed each word as she inked it onto the paper. Suddenly, she raised her head in surprise.
The noise of rain hitting the ground and the walls had ceased, replaced by the crackling of an especially large fire. The elf rushed to the window with the rest of the students to find fire smashing against the walls, coming down just like the rain before it. Holly turned to see an empty hall, already full of encroaching flames. She dropped to the floor, shivering with fear, but it fell to pieces beneath her, dumping her into a endless void, where all she could feel was scratching claws and gnashing teeth surrounding her.
-------------------------------------
Holly woke up in a cold sweat with a pounding headache, though whether this was a result of the previous night's cocktails or the screeching and shouting going on outside, she couldn't say. Regardless, she staggered out of bed and began putting her dress on, scowling at Algernon, still asleep in her bed. Moron can't even wake up for a swarm of--
The elf blinked, and was suddenly struck by a wave of panic at the realization that Ouroborous had shown up. She dashed outside, and sure enough, there it was: a massive swarm of what was unmistakeably the same little bastards, and yet clearly different. Even in the chaos, as she fired bursts of nothing made from the fear hanging in the air, as swords and guns fired off wildly into the horrible mass of bugs, as the crunch of bones and screams of victims filled the air, Holly could tell – these ones were faster, more vicious than before.
Regardless, the villagers' assault was doing close to nothing to thin the bugs' numbers. They descended on James Till, the zombie who ran the restaurant down the street; on Ruby, the only reason Holly hadn't lost any semblance of rational thought by now; on Xzxzoxz, the disk-shaped robot whose constant whirring overhead as it patrolled for troublemakers had always been a comfort to the people of Fernwood. The Ouroborites ripped everything in their path that was edible to shreds, and several things that weren't, leaving splintered wood, torn metal and shattered bones in their wake, and soon enough, they descended on the elf, who was cornered and on the ground, shaking and emotionally spent.
The fangs buried under her skin, letting out a horrible pain, like a thousand needles dipped in acid. Blood dripped from her wounds, spattering on the ground and on the bones once belonging to Erik the Swordsman; tiny patches of flesh fell after them, only to be scooped up by straggling bugs. Holly suddenly became aware that she was no longer afraid; rather, she was furious at the fact that only when she finally decided to care about others (or at least pretend to especially hard), only then was she going to die, and in such a horrible manner, a preposterous mockery of karma--
A massive pillar of flame burst into the air. Holly gasped for breath and began shooting searing flames at the remaining ouroborites as they spun through the air; for a moment, it seemed like they were almost dead. Then a shout rang out from the other side of the village, and more began approaching; with much longer bodies, twisting and undulating, they quickly dodged all assaults and began wrapping around the legs of the villagers, gnawing dutifully, reducing everything below the knee to bone. Quickly, the inhabitants of Fernwood changed tactics to compensate; rushing around, taking the high ground where possible, exposing themselves to the airborne strain to avoid the snake-like ones. Unfortunately, no matter what they did, more and more of the bugs kept coming, tearing into innocent flesh, coating the boardwalk in red and white, green and blue, black and silver, spilling fluids and skeletons. The screech grew louder and louder in intensity, coming from all directions, as the great swarm closed in more and more tightly around the town.
Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 4: Misty Swamp] - MalkyTop - 08-05-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.
Eventually, Algernon did wake up, for once, in a way that didn’t bring up questions that he didn’t know the answer to. He knew exactly where he was and exactly what was going on and he found out exactly what he was going to do about it when he found himself bursting outside despite such an action going against any shred of common sense whatsoever. As he came up behind Cherry, he suddenly dropped his bag to shield his eyes and ears, wincing at both the light and sound. Yeah, he was probably better off inside.
“Ohhh god, what do we do, what do we do, what do we dooooooo,” he moaned once he was used to the chaos. He dug through his bag without really knowing why. Mostly, he supposed he was searching for ideas. But everything inside was just useless. “I knew it, you should’ve told them, at least warned them, we could’ve been more prepared—“
“You’re annoying me,” Holly said in a way that implied that if Algernon had been the most important nuisance at the moment, her fire would be directed towards him.
“Sorry,” he replied meekly.
“No, keep doing it!”
Being asked to be intentionally aggravating was the worst thing Cherry could have done. Immediately, Algernon seized up (at least aggravating-wise) and said nothing for a long while before finally coming up with a “You’re, uh, you weren’t very…thoughtful…about this…?”
“What the hell was that!” Cherry shouted back. “Are you even trying?”
“But that’s the problem! You can’t ask me to try being annoying!”
“Oh, goddammit, shut up!”
“Sorry.”
“No, keep going!”
Now thoroughly confused, Algernon decided to just complain as loudly as he could and ignore whatever Cherry said.
“So the first thing you do after I tell you that giant monster bugs are coming is get cocktails? Really?!” Oh, sweet, he had a whip! Not very useful against insects, though.
“You drank some too!”
“Only ‘cause you practically forced them down my throat!” Empty juice boxes? He really needed to clean this out.
The hot air whipped around them as Cherry continued blasting fire everywhere like a cannon with several mouths. “I had to shut you up somehow! The whole time, you were like ‘wah, wah, what are you gonna do, aren’t you gonna do something about the thing that might come maybe wah.’ I thought getting you drunk would at least make you less obnoxious!”
“Well, if you don’t mind me pointing this out right now, they came! So like I said, we should have prepared!” Wait! Wait! He had a gun! These things were big enough targets, right?
“Oh, right, say ‘I told you so,’ that’ll solve all our problems. I am so happy that you finally got a chance to feel better about yourself RIGHT AS WE’RE DYING!”
Wait. But his gun was in his pants, which would be inside.
“ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME!?”
“Hang on, I need to go back in, keep it up, okay?”
Algernon crawled back through the door, ignoring Cherry’s curses all the way. While he was in here, it was probably best to put on his clothes too.
He clothed himself as quickly as possible and unpocketed his gun just in time for some of the large insects to chew through the walls and jump him. With a yelp, he quickly aimed and pulled the trigger, only to hear a sad little click. Luckily, he had enough reflex to duck down and roll away.
He had a gun and he didn’t load it? What kind of stupid idiot—okay, granted, having a loaded gun in your pocket isn’t a good idea, but still.
His quick duck ‘n’ roll didn’t give him much distance in the small room and the insects were already attempting to maul his face for a second time. Algernon tried pulling something, anything out of his bag and swatted the nearest one with it, smashing it against the floor. He quickly realized that what he was holding was a skeletal arm and promptly freaked out (why did he have that aaaaaaah) and then realized there were still more insects to take care of and promptly freaked out a decibel higher.
They crawled over the skeletal hand, somewhat like bees, and Algernon shook it around, smashing them against any solid surface that wasn’t attached to him. After a moment, he slowed. Why exactly did they pounce on the arm rather than his delicious face?
There were small, purplish splats from when he had smacked the bugs to pieces and, now that he dared to actually look at his improvised fly swatter, he noticed that it was somewhat coated as well. It was something like…their own blood or bug juices or whatever (bugs don’t have blood, right?).
They were attracted to their own guts.
That’s disgusting. But fortuitous.
With killer insects still clinging onto the arm, Algernon ran out, holding it aloft like an Olympic torch. “I know what to do! I know what to do!”
Cherry turned around and only saw more Ouroborites. Algernon had to duck his head as the arm got charred but mysteriously kept intact.
“Oh, you’re back. I am so glad that you didn’t abandon me you bastard,” she spat before continuing to light more bugs on fire.
“No, wait, I know what to do!” Algernon couldn’t help but beam despite all the screaming and chaos around them. Cherry opened her mouth to say something sarcastic but was cut off by more of his excited babbling. “Okay, okay, first, we need a strong catapult, you know, or something that can really launch something really far away. And then, we need something pretty large that can be catapulted.”
Cherry stared at him, though she remembered to keep defending the two of them from insect attacks. Though it was getting harder to shoot fire with her mounting confusion.
“Oh! Also, we probably need a lot of these bugs. Crushed.”
Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 4: Misty Swamp] - MalkyTop - 08-12-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.
Holly would have said something along the lines of “You’re kidding me” with perhaps an extra word slapped in the middle that started with the letter ‘f’ and ended in ‘ing,’ but that was Holly and Cherry was trying extra hard to not be Holly, which was getting harder and harder with each passing second, especially with the added stress of giant mutant bugs trying to fly down her throat and eat her from the inside out.
Cherry stifled all cynical comments and said, “I think I might know where we can find a catapult-y thing.”
“Great!” said Algernon. “Right, I could probably handle the big gob of bug guts thing. So, where do we go?”
“Into the fire,” Cherry said with all the enthusiasm of a movie critic reviewing an animated summer flick. “And speaking of which, stay close to me. And do you have any ideas how to constantly annoy me while we’re moving?”
“Uh. Well.”
For some reason, Algernon flashed back to his childhood, when he mostly worried about things like schoolwork and video games and not falling off a swing set. There were quite a few annoyances he dealt with, but one stuck out in his mind. It was a horrible, horrible, horrible idea, but he blurted it out anyways.
And so it was that Algernon found himself being piggy-backed around what was driving steadily towards a post-apocalyptic setting by an elf who knew him more than he knew her and had grown a tendency to spew fire since the last time he met her. Every once in a while, he would ask her to go faster in a way that was supposed to be arrogant and self-entitled but just came off as incredibly awkward (like there was anything Algernon could come off as besides awkward). Still, there were many times when he clung onto the sides of her face, screaming at the top of his lungs “AAGH THEY’RE GETTING CLOSER, OVER THERE, NO NOT THERE, THERE, SHOOT IT SHOOT IT SHOOT IT AAAAAGH” that really, he didn’t even need to try and Cherry had to suppress every urge to shake him off and get on with things without a pansy riding her back.
It was lucky that Cherry had enough stamina to carry a (supposedly) full-grown man. It was lucky that Algernon was wimpy enough to have none of that heavy muscle stuff weighing him down. It was lucky that their destination was relatively close. Fate had even sent a further annoyance in the form of other townspeople flocking towards her like she was the messiah. Considering how she was blazing a trail through the swarm of monsters currently trying to devour their everything, it was pretty understandable. But she hoped she wasn’t expected to save every single one.
Dr. Grellend (was he a doctor?) had worked hard to barricade his residence. It was almost heartbreaking to put that effort to waste by blasting through a wall.
Algernon dismounted.
“Grellend!” Cherry shouted out, though it wasn’t quite that necessary.
“Are you trying to kill me?!” the dwarf shouted back. His outburst probably had something to do with them breaking down the walls that were keeping the monster bugs out.
“Sir, do you happen to have something that we could use to fire something really large really far away?” Algernon asked meekly. Other townspeople who had survived the trip were crowded inside, as far away as possible from the new hole.
“I would have happily provided sanctuary!” Grellend continued, still stuck on the breaking-into-his-house thing.
It took a while to get back on track.
It turned out that Grellend did have a nice, big catapult for reasons he didn’t want to talk about and it was strong enough to fling objects quite far, but they would probably need a nice, good hill or something in order to fire a big glob of bug guts because otherwise it would probably just collide with a wall.
“There wouldn’t happen to be a hill around, would there?” Algernon said in a way that was hopefully certain that there wasn’t.
The townspeople shuffled about and made general murmurings sounds that eventually came to something along the lines of ‘No, not really.’
“Well, what’s the big plan now?” Cherry called back, still holding off the horde of Ouroborites mostly on her own.
“Uh,” Algernon said. “What about a rooftop?”
“Do you really think you could roll this thing straight up a wall?” Grellend snapped.
“Maybe if we had a large pulley system—“
“I am not waiting for you to build a freaking pulley system,” Cherry snarled.
“Well…who can climb walls?” Algernon asked.
A few hands went up.
“Who can climb walls while dragging a catapult?”
Quite a few hands, that is to say, all of them, went down.
“Okay. Uh.”
“We’d also need people to carry up defenders so that nobody gets eaten on the way up,” Grellend observed sardonically.
“…Right.” Briefly scanning those who happened to have wall-climbing skills, Algernon pointed out the strongest-looking ones. “Maybe if we have a team pulling it up? And then you can carry up Cherry and…do you happen to have some sort of stairway up to the roof?”
“No, not really.”
Algernon rubbed his forehead in annoyance, or would have if there hadn’t been sharp worm teeth in the way. “Right, right…I’ll just…get up there myself. You…do have rope, right? I just realized I never asked and since this whole thing depends on the assumption that you have something rope-like, I hope that you wouldn’t do something like not tell me while you’re listening to this…”
“No, I have rope. Chains, too, if you really want.”
“Right. Good. And something nice and big for a projectile, right?”
“Yup. Though that’ll have to be carried up too.”
“We’ll just deal with that as it comes.”
They ended up going for tying rope harnesses around those designated to carry the catapult up, but then tied those to chains attached to the catapult. To save a trip, they tried then tying a large, smooth metal ball to the back with an especially large chain that was certain to have enough slack so that they could simply pull it up when the catapult was all settled at the top. Cherry was tied to the back of her designated carrier and Algernon reluctantly decided to make gecko-grip shoes and walked up besides Cherry, possibly hovering there in case she wanted to be annoyed again.
The plan went surprisingly well, even though the climbers struggled with their load for what felt like an hour or so, and it probably took another hour to haul the ammo up. It took yet more time to load the catapult, but at least it took less than a second for Algernon to make the large ball covered in bug juices so that it looked like an especially disgusting jawbreaker. Almost instantly, the flying insects swarmed to the large, purplish mass and the crawling ones…crawled up to it, hugging the thing like a clingy lover. Everybody stepped back, but the swarm had eyes only for the catapult and its load. It was then that Algernon realized that someone would actually have to get close and launch the thing. Without asking, he was certain that nobody wanted to put their hands anywhere near the swarm, even if they were paying no attention to them. He supposed that, since it was his plan, he would have the honor of pulling the trigger.
It was then that he realized that he had never launched a catapult in his life, and with the weapon now looking like a big mass of bugs, he wasn’t sure how to launch a catapult. There was probably a lever somewhere, covered up by the swarm.
With great trepidation, Algernon approached the catapult, using the skeletal arm he had with him (seriously, why did he have that?) to brush off a suspiciously lever-looking part that proved to indeed be a lever. Making sure that he was standing at a relatively safe place, he attempted to hook the arm onto the handle and pull it. Dear god, he hoped he had to pull and not push.
The lever went down, the catapult made catapult-y noises, and then it did catapult-y things, and the ball covered in bugs and their guts flew off into the far distance, almost ponderously so. The flying insects zipped after it while the crawling ones valiantly tried to follow but many of those who lagged behind were burned up by Cherry.
And thus, the swarm was excised from the town without a hitch at all and everybody made a sort of weary celebration whoop and tried to figure out how to clean up the mess and go on with their lives while Algernon busied himself with washing bug gunk off of his surprisingly useful skeletal arm and making sure the coating of bug gunk stopped being a drain on his memories.
They didn’t really think about where the giant ball was going, nor did they think about which direction they haphazardly aimed the catapult towards. They were alive and things weren’t killing them and that was enough for them.
The townspeople of Kerosene probably would have some objections if they had known what was going on, but really, nobody could expect that a ball of the monster bugs they were trying to eradicate would come falling from the sky.
Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 4: Misty Swamp] - Schazer - 08-15-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.
Bear escorted the Countess from the mechanical shower, to a recently abandoned shack on Holm's outskirts. Outer outskirts. Then led her to his own shack, although his looked considerably more lived in. A family of sparrow-faced humanoids waved at the lumbering creature from their second-storey home as Bear led the Countess to the market. Then the other end of the market, seeing as the magicians and artificers appeared to have established a gradient in favour of a full-blown turf war. Then to the residence of Bear's friend - some kind of fish-monkey they met on the street which complimented the Countess' claws, then proceeded to stare nervously at them while entertaining the duo on his verandah. Then a brisk walk round the perimeter to acquaint the Countess with the townships which could be found a day or so's walk down any of the boardwalks. Bear was pleasant, informative, and almost pitiably trusting company - in a floridly sesquipedalian kind of way. He knew the layout of Holm and its satellite villages, and was happy to share it with anyone willing or too polite to avoid pretending to listen.
It was only once Bear had ensured Countess was personally shown where the track to Airstrip Hill was, and he'd confessed in somewhat apologetic terms that an entire afternoon's prattling had exhausted the drearily numerable list of things to see in the Misty Swamp's capital. Countess thanked him for his time, and scuttled off as fast as she could.
The sun had finally slumped in the sky - to the point where it glared bruise-coloured daggers over the swathes of mist - when Countess found her new home amongst the tangle of shacks. She surveyed the few sticks of furniture the probably-legless previous tenant had left behind, ("pursuant camaraderie, Scoresby, prior altercate remedy" was Bear's nigh-incomprehensible explanation) finding no appropriate outlet for her boredom-fuelled desire to do something psychopathic.
Fortunately for the amalgam, Message had been tracing a cursive, oily path after her since she'd gotten shot of Bear. It slithered under the door, splashed a slasher grin of itself across a wall, then began to write.
Dear Countess,
We shall proceed to Airstrip after sundown. My associate will be available to forward any questions while we journey to our destination.
Sincerely,
The Message
Countess couldn't be bothered waiting, and left the shack. A frog-like creature was fluttering on webby wings from lamp to lamp, doling some kind of fluorescent goop from the vat it clamped in its feet. It blinked, and chirruped at the newcomer, waving a luminescing ladle at a sconce by Countess' front door. She frowned.
"No, no thank you."
Ktchak shrugged, hefted his cauldron, and lurched off down the darkening street.
---
Bear was refreshingly absent when Countess found the boardwalk she needed amongst Holm's tangle of rickety streets. The path to Airstrip was lit by perhaps a half dozen or so of the frog-bat's lanterns, before the mist thickened enough to obscure vision further.
After a few minutes measured by the amalgam's ticking and clashing, the mist relinquished a non-descript man.
"Is this your assistant, Message?"
The messenger said nothing, but a Message could be vaguely discerned in his lantern's glow as it slithered into his shadow. He turned, and stalked off after a moment's shoegazing, and stopped only when the Countess got over her incredulity at how rude this man was.
"My employer is Mr. Narus, Message. My irritation at being detained in this festering swamp will pale to his anger if you fail to assist me."
'Bryan' still said nothing, but seemed to be thinking for a long moment before he finally handed Countess an envelope. Its contents:
Dear Countess,
As I promised, I will address your queries. This gentleman is, indeed, my assistant. He answers to whatever you fancy – likelier than not, it will not truly matter.
In regards to your concerns relating to your employer: at the risk of increasing your ire further, may I hazard this unpleasant situation may have arisen through your own actions?
Eagerly awaiting your-
"Now hold on," snickered Countess in her most humourless fashion, brandishing the missive between two pointy fingers, "I've done nothing to earn punishment, and my inability to contact him proves as such."
It might've been nice if 'Bryan' had shrugged or something, or at least pointed at the shifting words so the agent wasn't left standing impatiently on a godforsaken boardwalk between nowhere and another part of nowhere.
Dear Countess,
I apologise if the prospect of your incompetence leading to punishment was an unwelcome prospect for me to raise – please accept my apologies and acknowledge it was merely a suggestion from the limited information available to me.
Of course, the fact of the matter does remain that while you are in this locale, it seems somewhat disingenuous to assume – despite safeguards – that this place is truly beyond your employer's perception.
So I may have a more accurate idea of the circumstances, and to prevent my making a damn fool of myself again, would you kindly detail the orders set for you?
Regards-
'Bryan' almost sighed, pulling out another envelope from his coat pocket as Countess flicked away little scraps of paper. His expressionless look was close enough to imploring that the Countess shrugged.
"He requested my services in a fight to the death. Namely, ensure none of the contestants end up trusting each other."
Countess took the letter, and opened it with trepidation. 'Bryan' strolled off down the boardwalk again, mist lapping at his heels. If he could express the Message's feelings on his own face, he would've worn a satisfied smirk. Of course, he was as expressionless as ever, while Countess read the letter in twitching, increasingly slash-happy hands.
Dear Countess,
I hope this will be the last correspondence which merits such an urgent response; as you may already have come to realise how unwieldy a medium this is through which the two of us may communicate. In this regard, I thank you for your patience.
Now, as sore a topic as it may be, I really would like to establish – for a minimum of future confusion about where we stand – your adherence to your master's orders.
You maintain you have diligently engaged in the task set by your master, but while your lines of communication are down I must wonder…
How do you know where your charges are?
How do you know what they are doing?
How can you be so certain you are performing your job as ordered, Countess?
Best regards,
The Message
Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 4: Misty Swamp] - MaxieSatan - 08-20-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by MrGuy.
Theta anxiously wandered through Kerosene. With his incredible hearing, he could already sense the familiar noise of Ouroborous in the distance; he was prepared to alert the townspeople at any moment. They had managed to fight off small packs of the bugs before, albeit with some casualties; besides, in all likelihood, the swarm would pass them by for some other settlement, as had happened before.
He raised a solid steel arm to his optical input visor. There was a different sound, this time-- the whistle of the wind, slowly increasing in pitch. The words "doppler effect" briefly flashed through his mind, and he recalled hearing bombs make similar sounds.
The screeching grew alongside the new sound, and Theta quickly realized trouble was coming. He activated his siren and began rushing through town to alert everyone he could find.
On the very edge of the boardwalk, a fire elemental stood. Ember had always felt useless before the bugs came-- being made entirely out of fire makes you unsuited for most work-- but the people of Kerosene had always treated him as one of their own. Lately, he'd had a chance to prove himself.
The tremendous mass of bug guts and juices grew ever closer; a huge and still-growing swarm of ouroborites followed shortly after. Ember raised a crackling arm against it.
As the ball smashed against the side of a shop, some of the coating spattered onto the elemental, who promptly flared up far more than he was accustomed to. He was unable to control the sudden spike of flame, and it quickly spread to the wooden buildings of the town.
Kerosene, true to its name, was now nothing but a huge pile of fuel for a quickly-rising inferno, and Ouroborous was now, amazingly, the least of their problems.
------------------------
The center of the swamp was ahead. Holm loomed ahead, a massive jumble of wood blighting the face of the environment.
The fog is displeased. All of the zombies present shared this thought at once, and all knew immediately must be done. They refuse to slaughter themselves. So you shall bring the slaughter to them.
As the twisted parodies of men and women slowly stormed forward through the muck, the fog contemplated its existence. How odd, to only gain thought from creatures who have none. But now I understand my purpose.
The zombies continued their inexorable march forward, their presence masked by the fog that swirled around them. Soon, they would extinguish the last bit of sentient life. And then, all remaining would be the fog and the plants.
Glorious.
------------------------
The Sage smiled at Acacia's supine form as she finally awoke. "Ah, about time. You've been out for days." She glanced around in a cold sweat, staring confusedly at the old man in the brown robes. She considered attacking him, but try as she might, she couldn't find her gun, much less get out of bed; her only attempt to do the latter led to quivering muscles and a quick collapse.
The Sage stroked his long white beard, keeping a good-natured smile. "Now, now. That's no way to show gratitude. You were nearly eaten alive."
Acacia managed to croak out a synthesized "Quad", and the old man slowly shook his head. "I'm afraid we don't have any of that. You're best off without it, regardless." He headed over to a small tin, and withdrew a few leaves, crumbling them up in his hand. "Open your mouth."
Reluctantly, she took the leaves. They were bitter, and scratched her throat as they went down. The Sage sighed. "Your aura is very harsh right now, moreso than the swamp could have done. Your mind isn't well."
Acacia, feeling slightly better, quickly responded. "I don't appreciate being kidnapped and insulted, old man. I don't need your garbage."
He shrugged, smiling. "Feel free to head back out into the swamp with no food or water, ready to be killed at any moment. I'm merely trying to help you." He headed over to a small cupboard, and withdrew a loaf of bread, placing it on the cot next to Acacia. "Eat this. You need to get your strength up."
------------------------
Inside Rolf Grellend's lab, the lone ouroborite finally reached the writhing black mass isolated in the tube. The dwarf who kept it was, regrettably, asleep in another room; thus, he had no way to prevent the half-starved bug, who had managed to subsist on small chunks of vine that had crawled through the isolation chamber's mechanical innards, from rushing forward to devour what appeared to be a motherlode of nutrients.
If ouroborites could register such an emotion, the pathetic prawn would have been shocked when one of the vines, with no apparent stimulus, lashed out and grabbed it. It easily crushed the creature, helpless on its own, and let the juices flow inside its twisting mass, thriving on the nutrients within.
But this ouroborite had consumed a particular meal just before the mass of bugs had descended on Fernwood. It had torn a bit of meat from one of the corpses animated by eldritch magic and fog; and when the vines engulfed it, the influence of both the fog and Thane came flowing back. Slowly, the vines began sculpting themselves into a peculiar form, that of a humanoid creature, albeit one stooped and misshapen. And within this creature's veins-- or where the veins would be-- was not blood, but merely more ouroborites.
It was hungry, and there was no food. So it began thrashing against the sides of the container, doing its best to smash through. And slowly-- with a gradual, horrible sound-- the glass began to crack.
Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 4: Misty Swamp] - MalkyTop - 08-27-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.
There wasn’t much to do in the morning besides clean up, and that’s what the townspeople tried to do. And with such a town of wildly varied beings with their own, potentially helpful powers, rebuilding was not too much of a problem. Holes were boarded over, roofs were replaced, boardwalks were patched up, the whole shebang. Some residents found themselves housing a few of the newly-made homeless, but it wasn’t getting crowded and everybody was at least on friendly terms with one another, so, hey, it wasn’t too much trouble.
A group came together in the Town Hall (jokingly called Stuffy Important Building of Uselessness up until now) to discuss what exactly should be done to prevent such a disaster from occurring ever again. Cherry was required to attend after Algernon let it slip that she had encountered the beastly bugs before, much to her ire, and she had gone, muttering darkly, thus leaving him to his own devices.
It seemed as though nobody really questioned his sudden ability to walk on walls and Algernon found that nobody was pestering him to do anything like create houses out of thin air, which he was eternally grateful for. He tried to help in reconstruction until it was evident that he really had no ability to build things himself and so instead found himself in a watchtower overlooking the swamp. His partner in watching looked very human. Algernon didn’t talk with him much, though, because he was asleep.
Watching out for danger after the danger had so recently passed was an extremely tedious endeavor. Though you knew what the danger looked like and you were indeed afraid of the danger and you would tense up at the thought of the danger coming back, but really, it never came back and you were just giving yourself an adrenaline high that would go away after a few seconds after you realized what a silly goof you were being and settled down enough to realize how boring everything was.
Then Algernon spotted movement in the swamp. It was heading towards town.
After he stopped freaking out again and looked closer at the movement, he realized he recognized the movement, or at least thought he recognized the movement, and quickly slid down the ladder to run towards it.
At the edge of the broken boardwalk, he could see a group of beings already climbing up on it. One of them he recognized because she was the only person he recognized from the remnants of his past. The other he recognized because it was hard to forget a gunslinger snake. They all looked rather disheveled, though that was probably because of their trip through the swamp.
As Algernon helped to pull Chambers up on the boardwalk, he asked, “What happened?” He hadn’t been back to Kerosene for a while, but he was pretty sure they had been rather happy just staying in their own little town.
Galatea glanced at him as she wiped her face. “…So you were here the whole time.”
“Well, yeah, I…didn’t those…uh, the lobster thing tell you where I was?”
“Presumed dead,” Chambers said rather coldly, already starting to slither into Fernwood. “Along with the rest of the group.”
Everybody was now trudging slowly with the snake. Algernon jogged up beside Galatea again and repeated, “What happened?”
Galatea continued staring downwards. “A huge thing landed in Kerosene. Those insects were…everywhere. The town’s burned down now.” She finally looked up again. “Your engineer friends are—“
She must have understood what the look on Algernon’s face meant because after a few seconds of silence, she punched him.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The newly-made Council received the poor former Kerosenites with open arms, apologizing profusely along the way, although they made sure to constantly repeat that none of it was really their fault, that it was a simple mistake, that they needed to drive the swarm away, that if they could do anything different it would have been to aim the catapult sliiiightly to the left, that Algernon was their hero and it was his idea so please don’t kill him although if you are really that angry maybe you could punch him a little but seriously don’t kill him.
Kerosene’s survivors weren’t numerous, but there weren’t a lot of places for them to stay. It wasn’t getting quite crowded yet, but when nobody from Kerosene could hear them, the budding Council couldn’t help but say that they were glad there weren’t more of them.
A faint voice called out from one of the watchtowers. It cried, “People coming from Holmside!”
----------------------------------------------------------------------
It never seemed as though they were building shelters quickly enough for the large number of refugees that were suddenly flooding Fernwood. Part of it was because the Council, now composed of beings of all towns that came in, continued arguing about many issues, issues of punishment, issues of blame, issues of workload, issues of ‘what would be fair,’ issues of tissues, issues of issues, a great many issues that a significant amount of the Council thought a waste of time (that was also an issue). The residents complicated matters, everybody getting along as much as the Council itself was. There always seemed to be one complaint or another muttered in the streets.
Grellend claimed that someone broke into his lab and stole something, though he wouldn’t say what this something was. That caused an uproar.
Then somebody else claimed that Grellend was performing unethical experiments in his lab and further insinuated that he was the cause of the plague of zombie things that destroyed most of their homes. That caused another uproar.
There were allegations that Algernon’s actions were maliciously deliberate and those people continued to punch him, or at least anybody who looked like him, which prompted another group to call the others out on it, decreeing that they should just leave the poor man alone already.
Protests rose in front of the Town Hall as well as the Council continued to fail to decide upon anything at all. In an effort to please the public, the Council opened their debates to the public, a move that they immediately regretted when the public came, bearing rotten fruit.
It was all very odd. The atmosphere was indeed strained, but had some sort of manufactured quality about it, as though the situation was this turbulent because of some outside force rather than natural conflict among the people. Certainly, the scandal and rumors and protests all seemed to rise up more quickly than it ought’ve.
But it seemed everybody was too preoccupied with arguing, punching, complaining, or blaming Grellend to really notice.
Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 4: Misty Swamp] - Pinary - 09-17-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by Pinary.
Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 4: Misty Swamp] - Godbot - 09-26-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by Godbot.
Over the next week, Fernwood and its able-bodied refugees set to work reassembling their tiny village. Various swordsmen, a plant wizard, a self-styled “extreme botanist” and a miniature giant lumberjack had grown several new trees and cut them down for lumber. This went to a construction crew of various dinosaurs and beastmen, an elephant-like creature with ivory tentacles for tusks, and an entire crew of goblin ex-pirates, who had made some rudimentary repairs to the boardwalks before moving on to putting together some emergency housing for the people who were still gradually trickling in. Every once in a while, another group of refugees arrived, bringing word that another remote village had fallen.
Before long, Fernwood was extending another thirty feet in all directions, including up. By growing trees as extra supports, the sturdier buildings had had second stories added to them, and another few watchtowers were put in place, mostly in case Ouroborous returned, but also in case of raiders attacking while the village was both crippled and well-populated. Once they had nearly filled all of the available space with new buildings and construction projects, they began work on a system of piers and raft-like platforms that extended into the lake so they could build even more. Before long, Fernwood was starting to look like something between a wooden city and a shipwreck. (A lot of people jokingly blamed the goblin pirates for that, but Captain Scumbeard’s crew didn’t think it was very funny.)
---
Cherry’s decision to set up shop as the village therapist was extremely well-timed, to say the least. It was only a few days after she started, and her list of clients was already so full that people were showing up after hours, hoping to get a minute of her time. As Holly, she might have turned those people down, but Cherry wouldn’t dream of it. She was only one woman, but she didn’t need the rest as much as all those poor villagers and refugees needed peace of mind. And besides, it was only during the evenings.
No one went out at night.
At first, Cherry was worried that using her pathomancy so much and so often would make her unstable again, but it turned out to have the opposite effect. At the end of each day she was usually exhausted, and Algernon periodically had to dump large amounts of sharp ice crystals, ticking alarm clocks and DO NOT ENTER signs into the swamp, but just the knowledge that she was doing something good for other people on her own free will and asking for nothing in return was enough to keep her happy and her thaumic levels stable.
This kept Algernon in good spirits, too, so Cherry never brought up how often Algernon came up in conversation during her sessions.
---
Galatea and Chambers had stopped talking to and looking at Algernon for obvious reasons, but mercifully, they hadn’t told anyone that Algernon was the one who had redirected Ouroborous towards Kerosene and destroyed the entire village by accident. Maybe out of respect, figured Cherry.
Instead, the people of Kerosene found out because Fernwood declared Algernon a hero.
The locals were extremely grateful to Algernon for obvious reasons, and a sizeable group of villagers pushed to hold some sort of feast or holiday in his honor, which only made Kerosene hate him more. After a bit of deliberation and a few covert meetings, the town council decided not to take sides, and ruled that their town and supplies weren’t in good enough shape to manage anything like that. Even though that was basically true anyway, their decision didn’t really solve anything, and some days it felt like it just created more tension.
(Originally, the Kerosene refugees had been planning on taking the fact that they were stuck in hastily-thrown-together dwellings as an insult, but it was pretty obvious that it was just because there weren’t any empty houses in Fernwood before or after Ouroborous leveled about half of it, so they just settled for hating Algernon even more so that they could be angry at Fernwood for celebrating him. It worked out okay.)
So, villagers frequently came by Cherry’s little magical psychology joint to talk about how much they hated Algernon and how terrifying Ouroborous was and how they knew it was an accident but really it must have been on purpose that Algernon did it, it must have been because he knew how much they hated him, everyone’s out to get them, everyone always has been, or else it’s the universe that wants to make them miserable and do you know about that time a god plucked them out of their lives to get murdered by an elephant with ivory tentacles for tusks?
Cherry didn’t know about that, but she just smiled, nodded, worked her magic and worried about Algernon.
For the moment, she didn’t really have to worry, though. In an uncharacteristic show of good sense, Algernon made the decision to spend the week after the incident avoiding both the people who wanted to celebrate his misdeeds and the people who wanted him lynched for his heroics. After a few days of sitting in Cherry’s house doodling and staring at the wall, guilt began to set in, so he got out of the house and started helping to get the town organized again. He mostly just performed simple manual labor, clearing away rubble and tearing down rotted houses that were sinking into the swamp and torn up beyond repair, but everything helped.
Cherry never brought it up, but she was delighted to see Algernon actually doing something on his own for once that didn’t involve him getting attacked by monsters.
He kept a low profile and mostly worked odd hours, before other people were getting up or while they were going home to rest – generally, any time of the day that discouraged running into anyone who wanted to give him a shiv in the ribs. But he never worked at night, of course. Cherry would be expecting him home, or she’d get worried and pissed off and think he’d gone and done something stupid or gotten himself hurt.
Besides, no one went out at night.
---
No one knew exactly when it started, since there were so many people and so many unfamiliar faces and no one knew where anyone was staying at night, but a few days into the Fernwood reconstruction effort, people started vanishing. By the time anyone noticed there was a pattern of people going missing, it was clear that most of the people who were disappearing were night watchmen, tasked with standing in the one place on the outskirts of the village. Where no one could hear them. In the dark.
As a response, the Fernwood town council doubled the number of people on night watchman duty, and only a few people showed up each night. The brave souls who did would stay in the center of town around a fire where everyone could see each other and no one could really see much of anything else. Not a lot of actual night-watching got done, but no one vanished or died, so no one really had anything to complain about.
But even after people learned to spend the night indoors where it was safe, there was still the issue of why people had been vanishing and who was responsible for it. Just to make things convenient for everyone, the disappearances had started on the same night that the first couple dozen refugees arrived, which narrowed the suspects down to either one of the refugees or one of the villagers, depending on whose side you were on.
People watched their neighbors and boarded up their windows. A few brave villagers formed a group of vigilante watchmen to watch the docks. Their group was quickly disbanded upon their abrupt and quiet disappearance two nights later. In the end, everything just led to more suspicion, tension and divisiveness in Fernwood. This suited Thane just fine.
Every few nights, Thane’s empty shell came from the shadowy outskirts of the village to claim some hapless villager. No one trusted everyone, so everyone made sure they were alone, and that just made it easier for him. Closed doors and absent watchmen didn’t stop him any more than devouring villagers sated his mindless hunger for violence and flesh.
People kept disappearing.
No one went out at night.
No one knew why.
Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 4: Misty Swamp] - Schazer - 10-03-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.
Sarin, doing her best to be a gracious host, invited the Countess to try the champagne they'd procured from somewhere. The amalgam merely took the thing's word for it. She was content to sulk, talons slung over the edge of Richter's cagelike claws.
When one broke above the mists in an ornithopter like Richter, you could really appreciate how thick all the fog really was without your realising. It cast a pearly mourning shroud over the best part of Holm a comforting distance below, leaving a driftwood atoll of roofs gasping above it. If anything, the ramshackle stamps of tenacity ruined the Countess' mood even further. She wanted off this ship. She had no desire to spend further time in the swamp.
'Bryan' had taken a seat near the rear of the vehicle, the Message apparently content to leave the Countess to her seething. They hadn't corresponded since their departure from Airstrip Hill.
Sarin worked her mouthparts in a fretful little dance, gnawing heedlessly away at the cup in her hand. She knew better than to offer any of Message's... associates a hand, but this Countess creature had seemed cognizant enough to suggest she wasn't one of them. Maybe she was just a creature that didn't talk. The mantid leaned against what might've been an analogue for one of Richter's many radii, seeking reassurance, then approached the sullen machine.
"We don't fly this way often without good reason; there's nowhere for Richter to rest. You said you were travelling to Fernwood, yes?"
Countess had said no such thing, nor had she exchanged more than a few words with Sarin since they'd boarded. Her head creaked round, until it pointedly glared in Devon's direction. "That was Mess- my intention. That was my intention. Yes." 'Bryan' shifted slightly in his coat, prompting Countess to pointedly lock her jaw at him in mutual dislike.
Sarin wrapped a talon around a bone-strut at Richter's request, receiving some aeronautical information from the spectral pilot. "Richter says we're another two days out, perhaps less if Message could arrange a breeze-"
"Ask it yourself," trilled the Countess, sociopathic boredom poorly disguised. "I've nothing further to discuss with it." She began etching a picture into the mesh of carpals that comprised their ship, but stopped with an even sulkier air at Sarin's nervous request.
"Richter is the boat." Countess couldn't be bothered trying to inject or remove sarcasm or incredulity from her voice. She just didn't see the point of any of it.
Richter was the boat. Richter was the reanimated remains of some great beast of aerial burden with eight low-slung limbs like whale-flippers, on long (perhaps-humanlike) arms. The hand-bones all wove together in a big, easily-dismantled basket, swaying slightly beneath a ballooning ribcage full of spectral fire. His skull had gone missing in his own battle, but Sarin loved him anyway.
She had to - she was the one that sliced it clean off. It had been for the best.
The Misty Swamp had never known Richter's roar, but that was probably for the best, too. The only one he talked to these days was Sarin, anyway. Countess sighed again, mind wandering to her fellow contestants - wondering if killing one would summon the Controller. It seemed worth a shot. Better than these abysmal "plans" Message seemed to be assembling for her. Better than acknowledging the wordy little ingrate might've been right-
Sarin chattered nervously. Countess turned, and more on reflex than anything else, shot the messenger. Stabbed him in the gut. Whatever. There was a momentary regret, mollified somewhat by the sudden spark of life in Bryan's eyes, that she hadn't shot him. She chirped contentedly instead, clamping her fingers shut on what tenuously felt like intestine, before springing them apart and yanking her arm out. The mantis-woman shrieked, scrambling to safety atop the hellfire glow in her companion's ribcage. The whole ship creaked ominously, or more ominously than the flying haunted skeleton of an eight-legged skywhaleboat was inclined to do anyway.
The amalgam stood stock-still, arm primed to impale 'Bryan' on it again if he ever stopped kneeling and bleeding all over the woven-bone floor. He didn't, but the Message's efforts to stifle whatever cries of pain he might've uttered were quite obvious.
With a clenched hand full of envelope, and a disappointing lack of emotion in his eyes, the man shoved the letter Countess-ward. She took his fist in her own spidery claws, then clenched, spearing parchment and tendon with her permanent grin.
Richter flung his hands apart, needing no prompting from Sarin, reconfiguring the basket of bone into four pairs of oar-like wings. His passengers fell, but strangely devoid of screaming. The ghostcraft floated where he was for a minute or so, as though expecting the fog to part and a clockwork murderess to fly shrieking at them, but nothing happened.
Rick, we should go. Warn everyone at Airstrip that Message is an enemy again.
thought it never stopped being one.
Yeah, well.
---
Splash.
Dear Countess,
You've no time to be sulking, you merely brought this upon yourself. You saw the lights of a boardwalk on your left – no, your other left, even if your sense of direction failed you on the fall down.
Worry about the mud later. You've got bigger problems.
Yours reluctantly,
The Message
P.S: On the bright side, we can now dispense with those clumsy paper notes you seemed so fond of eviscerating, like my last Messenger. I'd exclaim that's grand, but really it's small solace for either of us.
The Countess would've snarled, but for the swamp mire in the cogs of her throat.
Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 4: Misty Swamp] - Woffles - 10-19-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by Wojjan.
Acacia followed the narrow winding road, fog covering her every side. She looked back, but Kalevi's voice died in the mist. She wasn't sure if he cared enough to call her name. No one ever was, she was extinct, left to battle in vain on this rotten earth. She looked up at the thunderous white sun, but it was covered in purple clouds. She looked around her. In every direction, the swamp's darkness. She heard something.
“Who's there?”
Acacia heard the hollow wail of death all around her, and the rustling wind carried her head in its direction. The scream of a man who lost his lungs, his voice, his mind. The thin silhouettes skirting the mist, flesh and bones no more than strings hanging from their spoiled hull, were unmistakeable. Those were the menace, the illness she had been battling against. The plags were here.
Though the winding boardwalk gravely limited her movement, she found a way to dash off at the very sight of the first. She ran, the road unfurling in the mist like a tunnel, but at every side more plags emerged, somehow standing straight in the marsh's muck. Slowly, almost like a straight line, like the narrow confines of crushing walls, they closed in on her, until she could smell their corpses. From up ahead, one of them had found a way onto the boardwalk, and with a shriek Acacia pivoted around, almost instinctively. But on the other side too, more diseased, more mist, and the utter dread of dying.
She now stood straight in front of a large group of them, neither of them moving, numb in fear or sheer weakness of will. Their eyes stared her over, looking straight into the mist, into the sun, and like wax they burned away. From the crowd, one of them pressed their way forward. So maliciously malformed, scars and scrapes all over their face, still Acacia recognised him.
Kalevi revealed a gun and held it to his own head. “Last round left, Aic,” he mouthed, with a delirious grin plastered over his face.
“No!”
Acacia's eyes flipped open, but it still took her a long while to actually climb out of bed. She rubbed her eyes, then the back of her head, her neck and her hair (what little she had) as if to find an entrance into her mind and rub out the terrible nightmare at the source.
She looked around the room where she had spent the last few weeks, as if to check if she had truly woken up. Yes, she was in the reassuringly familiar hotel room, where she had fallen asleep every night since her arrival in Hearth. The bed she was in was posh, but her tossing and turning in the night had piled the bedsheets and pillows up into a gaudy mess of velvet.
“Kal?”
“In here.”
“Kalevi?”
He turned around the corner to face Acacia. Kalevi had almost forgotten, due to the conversations he and Acacia were able to have, that she was technically deaf. “I'm in the kitchen if you need me." He pointed, although that was probably giving her deafness too much mind.
Though the room was technically just the one, the wall to Acacia's left separated the bedroom from the kitchen, and served little to no use other than creating the illusion of a larger room. Acacia found herself out of bed, miraculously, and she trailed the wall beside her to lead towards Kalevi. To her right was a double door, and to her left (past the wall) she knew was another.
“I was up early, couldn't really fall asleep again. Figured I might's well start breakfast.”
Acacia definitely wasn't used to Hearth yet. The city had been very welcoming, and to be fair she was definitely in her element in the town, but ever since she lost her way in the mist (though she was sure she was out for only seconds, and the Hearth guards found her almost immediately) it felt as if a bit of the purple mist had lodged itself inside her, eating her dreams like a ghost. Those nightmares were the hardest part of her new life, to such an extent that she volunteered for every shift in every troop she could apply for (only to be denied for her handicap) and tired herself out working the day around juggling her job as a herbalist (which she sort of gave up on, being far outclassed by a magical treant and company) and odd jobs she took from villagers overnight. But what humorously took her the longest to get used to was the sight of Kalevi wearing an apron in front of the kitchen stove, always awake first to cook breakfast.
“I made salad, I hope I'm not stepping on any toes with that?” A sly smile found itself on Kalevi's face, but much more endearing than the time she had first met him.
“You tease! I'm no tree-hugger, you know.” Acacia leaned forward, almost hanging in Kalevi's face, barely touching.
She quickly leaned back again, flipping her short hair around. She tried as best she could to speak as nonchalantly as possible. “Salad is fine, really.”
Breakfast was usually silent, and if it wasn't they hardly spoke about anything interesting. Plans for the future or recollection of the past, even the very notion of the Gradual Massacre was swiftly ignored. With as much idle conversation as at the table the pair got dressed and headed outside.
The double doors swung open, and they found themselves inside the annex of Hearth itself. The hollow tree it was in essence had no visible entrance, so only those contestants with unconventional means of transport (or comrades with such) were able to enter. This of course meant two things. The city and its inhabitants were as of first a very close-knit group, and someone else or several elses arriving was as welcoming as marriage. Or mass marriage. Antisocial fellows weren't uncommon, but they left as fast and unceremoniously as they had entered. Due to the city being only available to those with powers that made relativity more of a guideline than a universal constant, there was an almost limitless space available to accept more people.
Second, life in Hearth was a lot more peaceful and laid-back than in cities like Fernwood. The more common dangers like plants, zombies, eldritch abominations, murderers, fire, mist, right hands of a thoroughly wicked grandmaster, or an all-devouring swarm of bugs, couldn't thrive as well in Hearth as in other cities. Hearth was very well known for its bustling nightlife (or it would have been if anyone who knew about it didn't already live in it) and being, everyone's past experiences considered, a fine change towards entertainment. Some even came with the idea of starting a night club, serving cocktails made from the giant tree's fruit. Discovering if your alien body could cope with ethanol was, according to the regulars, “part of the fun.”
Once both Acacia and Kalevi had left their room, they turned to the door. Pressing a handle at the top made it blip out like a TV screen, leaving but a tiny square as evidence of it ever existing. This handywork, a hotel room with two different exits that can lead from any defined place to another, was the special power of a man who arrived in Hearth as a god, but in his world had the lowly job of a bellboy. His power was regarded normal where he came from, but it was a rare sight in Hearth, most useful to receive the steadily growing population. Felipe Cortez was not used to the attention his power begot in this city, so whenever Acacia met the man, he gave off a finnicky, nervous vibe though she was pretty sure he had to have been sociable to get the job. In a past life, maybe, or on a full moon.
Kalevi pocketed the door, and bid his farewells with a fleeting streak along Acacia's shoulder. She knew him, and how cold he'd been to her (and everyone else for that matter) and that made it almost a kiss to Acacia. They parted their ways, which left Acacia with sadly little to do. Hearth was a monument of life, so one would expect her skills in botany to prove quite useful, but what use is a green thumb when you're surrounded by aliens and spirits with green bodies and superpowers that could make a plant grow on your finger if they fancied? Hearth was in full expansion (even hotel doors took up space) but every job in the process was already spoken for. Acacia wasn't strong, so she could hardly help digging out the bottom. She was skilled enough to help the tree grow further, but others were much better, and her skill couldn't compare with their magic.
With all the time in the world on her hands, she still found some part of her to annoy itself at being interrupted.
Like a crescent, a perfectly black line seemed to get cut out of reality. A thin, young hand covered in soot grabbed at the line, and tore the space in front of her open like a shred of paper. Another hand followed to grab at the other end of the space that just had cut itself open in Hearth, and soon the lady responsible showed her face, arms crossed on the edge of reality as if the blackness in the unnatural hole was a bath, and floating in perfect stillness in a pose that could not feel natural in the slightest. She turned around, where Acacia could make out a few other people shuffling about in the void. She called out to her presumable allies.
“We did it, we're out!”
Acacia circled the gap once or twice, probably to find out where it lead, but she soon realised it made about as much sense as any method of transportation in Hearth, and let the subject be. A lot of people tried to explain complex movement to her, and they'd failed time after time.
Maybe they did it just to spite her, but almost purposefully they saved the most ferocious of the cast for last. By the time some skeletal warrior wielding his own arm stumbled out into the city, Acacia felt that uncanny feeling that meant as much as “I really wish I was carrying my chainsaw right now.” Gapgirl asked Acacia where she was right now, but she could only gasp for air. An 'uh' would be pretty appropriate right now, if only her thought-to-speech could deal with mannerisms. She motioned for the merry crew to follow her, and soon the odd parade found itself cautiously treading along a path of branches and wooden boards, circling the periphery of the hollow tree.
The girl introduced herself as Calabiese, and as she extended her hand towards Acacia it gave her a chance to fully size her up. She was a perfectly typical young lady, freckles and red hair tied together in droopy pigtails with soggy ribbons to them, and apart from incredibly baggy clothing nothing seemed off at first sight. She carried an odd backpack, one of those explorer's hip satchels she saw in a movie once, and she presumed it lead to a different dimension like the portal she exited from, because when she fossicked around for a hairbrush she seemed to find all sorts of things like balls of yarn and a bottle of water, none of which seemed to fit in the bag on their own, let alone all together.
Calabiese was a thorough airhead, but she definitely wasn't flat-out dumb, so it didn't take long for her to pick up Acacia's quizzical gaze. She quickly turned to explain the specifics of her powers, all the while doing her hair. “Y'sees, dear, I control me limits. Any of 'em. C'pacity of my bag, distance or time from point A t'point B, or what's else ye's can think of. As long as't's got a limit someplace to 't, I's got it under m'mark. T'is one catch, but. If I's to fancy raising me one, I's gonna best find another to lower 'swell.” Her hair was now a braid she laid across her shoulder. “So, wanna meet me pals? Man, t'tell ya, the'ncredible affray, some deal't was!”
The walk was short, and Acacia figured a formal introduction could wait until their destination. Calabiese didn't. She told Acacia every single detail about Eye-Ay, as if she was the first welcoming being she'd seen in her entire life – which, judging from her merry crew, would've been an astute conclusion – and thought nothing of lengthening the time it took to get to wherever Acacia was taking her to tell her all about the battle she'd been through, and how horrible it was, and how you totally get used to skeleton marksmen after three rounds.
Acacia had politely nodded at every other sentence, and had politely stopped nodding once Calabiese felt she could take the story on her own, regardless of anyone listening to her from some point on. It seemed to distract her from slowing down the course of time around her, though, and she left Acacia with just about enough time to notice that Calabiese didn't move her feet to walk around, but instead opted to shorten the distance between her and whatever point she fancied by growing out her hair.
Acacia knocked on the door she'd arrived at, with the entire cast of The 'Ncredible Affray in tow. And old woman opened the door, someone Acacia hadn't seen for a long time, or at least since she herself had arrived in the village. Mahogany was the alma mater of Hearth, having used her skills in botany to make the tree habitable in the first place, and furthering her shabby stronghold into the village Hearth is today. Acacia decided now was about as good a time to seek her out. Maybe plan a village council or something.
Whenever something remarkably interesting happened in Hearth, first all the villagers would be invited to some sort of meeting or council, or whatever you'd call it, and from then on everyone would complain about it. Hearth was a pretty small village (and the acoustics carried quite the while, given its shape) so there wasn't much difference between complaining on the boardwalk or in the meeting, other than everyone else not feeling as embarrassed about hearing you rant about something aloud. Often the meetings would devolve to a bunch of conflicts between one person and another, strung together to form some kind of tacky court drama, with everyone else sitting put until it's their time to call someone out over something. With such a foresight of the meeting's course in mind, nobody was exactly happy to hear another had been scheduled (unless of course they had something to complain about) but nobody really dared not showing up either, in fear of being accused of not caring about the village at the next meeting. Shock and surprise all around, then, when the meeting didn't start off with someone kicking their chair from under their ass, but with a darling little southern gal “boy glad fancyin' you types all!”
“Well, Calabiese,” Mahogany huffed, “you definitely seem the most talkative of your group. Would you mind doing us the favor of introducing all of you?”
“I can introduce myself just fine!”
Toronto pressed his way through the crowd of far more imposing figured (even though he didn't even need the room to squeeze his lanky shape through) and straightened his spectacles in a way that made you suspect he forgot they weren't sunglasses, and smoothed his suit so his tie would stand perfectly aligned with his trimmed goatee. “Name's Toronto.” He lit a cigarillo on a special vintage designer cigarillo-lighter. “And this...”
He shook his cellphone a bit, until a small orange bubble flew out. It hissed, kind of like when you'd break a mirror, and flew through and around itself to check for anything of interest. “...This is Wish. Wish is a spirit that can fulfill, uh, last wishes. Wills, mostly, because he knows that someone else speaking for a dead guy isn't always what that dead guy wanted. He prefers black-and-white testaments. As for myself, I used to arrange funerals, but then I took a turn for accounting.”
Calabiese decided to interrupt him, clearly unsatisfied being demoted from her position as spokesperson for NA. “What's he trynna say's he's a forger. Makes him wills 'mself! Exploitin' poor Wish'ms like's nothin'.”
The crowd immediately geared up as Calabiese raised her voice, expecting at least a little bit of bloodshed this meeting. Some already started cracking their knuckles, ready to spring straight and shout at someone else and fall into the usual pattern.
“Shh! I told you not to say that in front of Wish!”
“Ye's said he ain'ts got any hearin', so what's t'deal?”
“Shut up! I mean... I dunno. I just don't want to upset him.”
“Aw, s'sweet o'yours t'admit't.” Calabiese made it as clear as in a middle school play that endearment wasn't something Toronto wore on a daily basis, and the way the man tugged on his collar and shuffled around in silence afterward demonstrated that he couldn't accessorise well with it either.
Calabiese strutted towards the next contestant with the flair and refined bossiness of a grandmaster, but severely lacking in their blase disinterest. “Thisn's, uhh, Shiro. He's a tengu, if I's remember, so's that why he's got'm lookin' like a bird. I, uh, don't't'behonest ever think've heard'm speak. There's't. Watch't beak though! 'S got's m'sharp one.” Shiro took a polite bow, and sat down on his knees by the table, without a word.
“And'ms here's Rossem.” With a gruesome ginding noise, the skeleton's bones clacked, his spine snapping into a wicked curve and almost detaching entirely from his skull. Fear gripped the council of Hearth, and Rossem's dead glare held it in a vice for long. “He's not's all bad, ye'see. But thing's he used t'bein' a hunter'r sum'n, so's got all t'intimidatin' air 'round'm.” Calabiese smiled at Rossem as if he were a human, something the citizens of Hearth right now didn't consider possible.
“...Saved m'life once, even.”
Oh, so that explains. Hearth was a saving grace to a lot of people, considering its location right in the middle of the purple mist, with nothing to scare the clouds away around it. Many of the inhabitants were simply dragged in by patrolmen (like Acacia and Kelavi) so the villagers were all very familiar with the gratefulness that grew from rescue, on either end of the bargain.
As if someone just recited a poem, Mahogany started clapping, but immediately stopped to rub her hands once she noticed no one followed her example. “So that's that, hm. I trust that you'll all find your place in the village soon enough. You've already made one friend, I see!” She waved in Acacia's general direction. Acacia mumbled something, or considered mumbling but didn't quite make it past the speech recognition barrier. “Well, that concludes my topics at least, so unless anyone has anything else to say...”
Several people rose up even before Mahogany had ended the meeting, and now that she had formally concluded it (asking for anything else to say was in essence a conclusion and propagation at the same time) already people were flinging complaints at one another. Acacia sighed, and wished she had the nerve so simply walk out from this part on. But she also knew that, were she to do so, at the very least someone would have to start complaining about it at the next meeting.
Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 4: Misty Swamp] - SleepingOrange - 11-13-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.
"So I guess... Ever since then I've just been uncomfortable around non-humanoids, you know?"
Cherry nodded silently. Yes, she knew. You told her every time you were here. She definitely knew. What she didn't know was why you kept coming back to it like this, or why you were so resistant to pathomancy, or why one little incident with an extradimensional horror made you such a xenophobe. But every time she thought about those questions, she started thinking very Hollyish thoughts. So she just nodded and looked concerned and did her best to help.
"It's just been so hard ever since everyone got mashed together because of those damn bugs... It was bad enough before, when I only had to deal with, you know, a few of them... Hell, I'd even nearly gotten used to the ones that came from the Sanguine Scrum. Now though, here in Fernwood it just seems like they're everywhere, and everything's so crowded."
Cherry nodded silently. It certainly was crowded, yes.
"I mean, I know I shouldn't feel this way, but it's just... Ugh, like Xerkzet, right? Just watching him undulate like that makes my skin crawl. Something so damn... slimy shouldn't exist anywhere, right?"
Cherry nodded silently, then cocked her head for a moment and drummed her fingers. It was hard to play psychologist when you couldn't cheat with pathomancy, but she was doing her level best, even if Careous Finch made her want to punch something with all his sniveling.
"It's probably best not to try to deny your feelings; instead, accept that you have them and work towards changing your reactions. You can't control how you feel, but you shouldn't let how you feel control you."
"Yeah, I guess..."
There were a few beats of quietude, which Cherry felt she had to fill.
"Maybe you should try–"
She was cut off quickly by a shout. It was followed by another, closer one, which was itself followed by Algernon bursting into the room. His eyes were wild and he had a gash through his clothing and shoulder; it wasn't much of a cut, but it was bleeding pretty readily, and judging from Algernon's movement and expression the cut itself wasn't the real problem. Cherry jumped up to help him, but he collapsed with a gurgled "Churrrrreeeee".
Before she could cross the floor to help him up, a lanky creature that looked like the worst parts of a spider and a human stuck together insinuated itself into the room. Its mandibles clacked as it stowed a small crossbow in its overcoat and drew a handful of knives.
"M sssurry t ntrupt, but thsss murdrur mssst fsss jssstsss."
It moved as though to cut Algernon's paralyzed throat, but Cherry bounded across the room and shouldered it away.
"What the hell is wrong with you? Kerosene wasn't Algernon's fault! Everyone knows that."
The spiderbeast looked as annoyed as it could and folded a pair of arms. "Prhhhps, prhhhps nt. But, t beecums clurr tht hee'sss glty uv dssspeernsssesss n drknsss."
Elfin eyes narrowed as Cherry puzzled out what the hell the spider was trying to say. She'd seen it before a couple of times, now that she thought about it, and had never had much success understanding it. Still, she thought she got the gist this time.
"You have got to be kidding! Algernon hasn't been killing anyone. Get the hell out of my office."
It uncrossed its multisegmented arms and shook its head slowly.
"M sssury, bt cnt lt t lv. Fff prtct th glllty, msst fsss jsstsss sss wll."
With no more warning than that near-gibberish sentence, it lunged at Cherry. She hurriedly transmuted her shock into an invisible pulse of outwards force, sending the spider sprawling backwards and knocking Algernon's prone form into the wall. She winced; she'd have to apologize for that later.
"Careous!" she shouted, "A little help?"
Her patient, for his part, peeked around the back of his chair where he was taking cover and muttered something containing the phrase "... did destroy Kerosene..."
Cherry's knuckles whitened. Of course he was going to be no help. Fucking worthless little... The spider was already righting itself, and she had nothing to hand. It wasn't very therapist-y to leave weapons laying around the place.
"Wntd nt t hv t sss thsss..."
Another chitinous hand pulled itself out of the spider's overcoat, holding the crossbow it had stashed earlier, freshly loaded with a paralytic bolt.
"Frsssd me."
Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 4: Misty Swamp] - MaxieSatan - 11-19-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by MrGuy.
Holly was used to death threats backed by a rather vague conception of "justice" by now, and for the most part, the plan worked along the lines of "get some asshole to take the fall for you, then run like hell." Unfortunately, Careous was unwilling; under normal circumstances, she'd shove some of her fear and rage into him, maybe whisper "kill the freak" into his ear, but the idiot just had to be resistant to magic. Her backup plan, such as it was, primarily consisted of "burn things", but it felt like the instant she made a move, the distressingly metal projectile would have smashed through her chest. She ran through several plans in her head, but all of them felt useless, given she was backed into a corner by an obvious psychopath.
She began backing away, heart pounding incessantly, her chest feeling about ready to explode. "Please, don't! This isn't justice, to kill someone just because, uh... just because they believe their friend didn't do something wrong!" She inched further and further from Algernon, breaking into a cold sweat. "Have mercy!"
The creature just shook his head. "Mrsssy sss nmy f jssstsss." He raised his crossbow and placed one appendage on the trigger.
Click.
The bolt whizzed through space, toxins dripping off its tip as it bore towards Holly's head; Holly's head (and for that matter, the head of everyone else in the room) subsequently dipped about two feet, and the projectile lodged itself in the back wall of the room. As it happened, being a bizarre amalgam of arachnid and human makes swimming very difficult, especially when one is dropped directly into a swamp via a hole that wasn't there before, which made the plan far more convenient.
The elf, her fear now out of the picture, made her way to Algernon as quickly as she could. By now, he was completely immobile, and his blood loss was only getting worse. Holly managed to clamber back onto dry land-- more than could be said for either Careous or the assassin-- and subsequently hoist Algernon out of the muck and over her shoulder. She made a mental note to fix the floor later; for now, there were far more pressing issues to attend to. She staggered through town, towards Grellend's lab.
------------------------
All of them in one place, and better still, an opening. No one would expect an ambush from inside the town; everything was outside, all threats outside, the fog outside. They kept it at bay with torches and the occasional fan, with carefully-grown plants on the edges of the boardwalk, all the towns did; its assault on Holm had merely left the fog with a pile of ashes that were once his minions, because naturally there had to be a zombie expert in that accursed metropolis. But they could not eradicate it from beneath the swamp, no, for the swamp and the fog were one and the same, and the only way to get rid of the fog would be to get rid of the swamp in its entirety.
Go beneath the water, my children. And, dutiful children that they were, they did, sinking one by one into the depths of the swamp, slowly stumbling towards the hole in the building marked Ironwood Therapy. Careous had climbed out of the hole, so all that remained was the creature with the crossbow, barely treading water, occasionally partaking in a frantic attempt to scrabble out onto the boardwalk again, to bring justice to the evil. Here is one. Destroy him. And the dutiful children did, drawing him under.
Fog began to seep through the pit, collecting in the office. We are doing them a favor, my children. Soon they will have no more to squabble about.
------------------------
Holly scowled at Algernon's unmoving body as Grellend paced back and forth, mixing various chemicals and mumbling to himself. Is it really worth all the effort keeping the little moron alive? Lord knows it'd be far easier-- no, no, that's a Holly thought, knock it off now. She continued scowling, now more at herself, as the dwarf finally plunged a syringe into the unconscious fellow's neck. He sighed. "There. He should recover within half an hour or so. Now, I really need you to be off, I have things to do."
Holly began to argue, but was cut off by the sound of shouting. A glance into the street revealed fog slowly creeping in from off towards the center of town, and a great deal of zombies. Most of the villagers were doing their best to mount a defense, but as the fog spread, they soon became indiscriminate with their attacks, flailing at innocents while accusing them of being "one of them" as well. Holly quickly slammed the door shut, only to see Rolf Grellend's scowling face. She grinned sheepishly. "You, uh, have a plan for this, right?"
He let out a single, sharp laugh. "Yes, actually. This building can be converted into an airtight shelter at the press of a button, with only those I deem worth saving allowed in. Obviously, it can't fit everyone, so sacrifices have to be made." He grinned, and hoisted Algernon off of the table he'd been laid on. "Unfortunately, seeing as the two of you arriving was directly correlated with things becoming far worse around here, I'm afraid you're one of those sacrifices." He shoved the limp man into Holly's arms.
She began to shake her head and start ranting about how this wasn't either of their faults and she didn't deserve to be shoved out into the swamp, but was unable to come up with a legitimate reason for why they should be kept; perhaps Algernon could contribute, but he'd be killed without her, and she couldn't see her abilities being much use in reclaiming the town. In all likelihood, they'd end up dead one way or the other.
Without a word, Holly exited the back door of Grellend's lab, and trudged out into the swamp with the still-unconscious Algernon.
------------------------
It was going so wonderfully. Easily thirty percent of Fernwood had gone half-mad; soon they'd have torn all the still-unaffected ones to bits, and then they could get to the process of slaughtering each other. Soon, one more of these accursed settlements would be knocked off the map.
It was true that the shelter would be a nuisance, but nothing worth worrying about. It would take them years to devise a way to venture outside without falling under The Fog's grasp; they would be dealt with when they needed to be dealt with. Until then, relish the small victories. Onward, my children. Murder all that you can find.
Two more minds entered The Fog's influence. As always, it seized the opportunity to spread.
------------------------
Holly kept trudging through the swamp, breathing more and more quickly. She was away from them, away from all the insane people, away from Ouroborous. But she had Algernon with her, and he was weak-minded, he was going to be affected by the swamp, not like her, she was strong, she could handle it longer. Shelter, shelter, she needed shelter, however small, a place to hide, to compose herself, to let him compose himself. Killing was to be avoided, but if it came down to it, she had to kill him first. She knew he wouldn't stop himself, why would he, he'd be mad within the blink of an eye. He stirred, and Holly barely stopped herself from crying out.
She saw something moving in the corner of her eye, heard the sloshing-squelching of footsteps through the muck. She walked as fast as she could, looking left and right, a cave, a safe town, anywhere for shelter. Something was chasing her, chasing them, but if they just kept moving, they'd be safe, at least until Algernon woke up and decided to murder her, look at him look at how weak he is he'll crumple in an instant just put him out of his misery now before he can wake up before he can attack you NO you have to find SHELTER and the footsteps kept coming, multiplying, from every direction.
Holly thought she heard laughter. She knew she heard Algernon groaning. Her heart beat faster as she broke into a run, desperately charging through the swamp.
Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 4: Misty Swamp] - MalkyTop - 11-20-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.
Above the laughter and the fear, Holly could hear Algernon’s mumblings steadily rise. It sounded as though he was mumbling something that sounded like “…sick of it…” Who knew what it meant. It might’ve meant he was sick of her, in which case he was going to jump up and kill her any moment now but she had the advantage, of course, he was probably still shaking the numb off of him unless he was faking it…how long had it been? Had it been half-an-hour yet?
More cackling. This time, she did cry out. It was hard running with someone over her shoulder, she could run much easier if he wasn’t – stop, no, stop there…no…
“…Cherrrrry…nnnguh…whuh…?”
Oh good, he’s awake. “Oh good, you’re awake.” She tried to smile despite the cackling rising anew, but this time coming from the front. Had she been running in a circle? She couldn’t have. No, no…she had to turn somewhere else. Turn away. “Can you move?”
“Nnnnghuh…whuuusss goin onnnnn…” Avoiding the question. He was avoiding the question.
“Oh, well, the usual,” she laughed, jostling him a bit more so that he didn’t slip off her shoulder. “Things happened, we’re running for our – “
“Agh!”
“Oh god what is it.”
“Aih bhit myh tdung,” he whined. Oh. Okay.
More cackling. From all around. They were surrounded they were surrounded oh god how could they be surrounded
“Be quiet,” she hissed. She had stopped running. But she had to get out fast, but there was something all around, she was sure, yes, she heard crackling, and if she ran off in the wrong direction she was going to fall into a trap. “Don’t you hear that? Can you move?”
“…dun…heer nything…let’s…let me dowwwwn…”
“No, I can’t, we have to keep moving, I can’t – “
“…let mee doooowwwwwnnnn.”
Holly let him down. He squelched into the swamp. Holly thought he was going to sink under, but then he managed to push himself up woodenly. His eyes looked unfocused. Holly went back to looking around wildly. The laughing had stopped, but that didn’t mean a thing…
“…I can’t do this anymore…”
“What?” she said, still not looking at him.
“I can’t take it. Things try to kill me an’ it’s happening too often an’ I don’t even remember why anymore. I was supposed to find out something, I was supposed to do something, but I don’t remember that either!”
“Okay, okay, got it, can we go now?”
Algernon flexed a hand and then struggled to his feet. “Cherry…I don’t want to slow you down or anything…I’m sorry for all the trouble I’ve been. It might be selfish of me. But I gotta just…go somewhere else for a while. On my own.” And without another word, he turned and hobbled away.
Cherry couldn’t say anything for a long time. And then she started shouting. “No! No! You can’t leave me! This isn’t the time for this!” He wasn’t turning back. “Everybody’s dead or dying! There’s nobody to kill you!” Still no response. She had to stop him, he had to stop him….because why….? Because…Holly didn’t need him….Cherry needed him. Did she? Holly needed to keep an eye on him. Because…Algernon was weak. He was the loser. Who knows what would happen.
“COME BACK HERE!” she screamed. “I, I, you can’t…” She had a thought. But then she stopped. Cherry didn’t manipulate, no, this was manipulating, which was against what Cherry stood for, but no, that didn’t matter, did it matter? Was there a point in being Cherry anymore when Cherry’s life had all gone to shit? Cherry was supposed to be perfect, but nooooooo, things just had to happen like this...Holly would be able to. She wouldn’t mind. But then, she wouldn’t care. But maybe she should?
But by the time she had finished that thought, he was gone. Something laughed again.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The fog was bad. Something was bad about it. It was obviously a bad fog…Someone said it, he was sure.
What was in his bag again? He didn’t remember. Was there anything important? Not too likely, really. He had never picked up anything too useful.
This stupid worm was itching. But when stupid worm teeth were embedded in your head all the time, it tended to get itchy. But this was remarkably itchy. Why is it so itchy?
get out of here
Yes, yes, he had to get out of here. That’s what he was doing. That’s a good idea. Where’d it come from? Somewhere. Somewhere was good.
not go that way
Not this way. No. Because...reasons. Yes.
Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 4: Misty Swamp] - Woffles - 12-27-2011
Originally posted on MSPA by Wojjan.
“Come in,” the Sage shouted, but the knocking persisted.
The Sage swiveled around to face the door, and noticed for the first time in a very long while exactly how cluttered his room was. For some reason, it irked him today. Drearily, as if his visitor shook him from his sleep, he stumbled through the mess. Halfway there, he tried again: “You can come in!”
Still knocking. Was this guy deaf or what? The man churred, or made such a sound, at least. He reached for the handle, not quite expecting a familiar face. “For goodness' sake, are you deaf or wh....”
Acacia was left wondering why the Sage was in a particularily gruff mood (even more than usual) but she couldn't follow his lips from the start, and figured it'd be best just to smile and nod. Acacia had a smile so laden with emotions that you could do naught but feel sorry for her. The Sage dusted himself off – useless, since he'd be wading his way back to his desk soon – and apologised sheepishly for his inconsiderate remark. “I'm... out of it today.”
“I couldn't read it very well. What were you saying?”
“Oh. Nevermind it. Please, come in!”
The Sage stomped and huffed his way back to his desk, while Acacia trailed the walls and cabins – he had told her to have a seat, but must of the seats in the room were cluttered with trinkets and vials and a book or two.
“So tell me, Acacia, what ails you.”
“Oh, nothing. Well, something, but I'm not here as a patient if that's what you're asking. I never got to thank you for saving my life. Quad was... It used to be so much of me.”
The Sage stayed silent, he wasn't a man to boast, but he at least admitted to himself that getting some gratitude felt pretty dang satisfying.
“...But I also have a favor to ask you. I think I told you once that I used to be a botanist? Ever since I arrived in Hearth I'd taken up gardening as a pastime, but I want to do more than that for this city.” She stroked the shelves, trailing the shapes of bottles inside them with her fingers, playing with their size and weight. “I want to know what all these herbs are. I could grow them, cultivate them so you'd never run out. I want to help in your research for the next way to cure the fog's effects. Sage, this is the only way I know I'd be able to repay Hearth.”
The Sage shivered, as if his heart froze over. “No. I have tons of work to do, and you wouldn't be able to make heads or tails out of this mess. Thanks for the offer.”
“But... why not?”
“I'm sorry. It just doesn't work like that. Please, leave me be.”
Acacia had been smiling so faintly up until then, but now she was boiling. Her hand clenched the bottle so tight she could have broken it. She was about to do something, but whatever it would have been she got interrupted.
“Sage, quickly! Some guy just got brought in and he's flipping out!”
The Sage spun out of his office, past stalwart Acacia. He grabbed a bottle from the cabin beside the door on his way out, almost at random, and made haste to Hearth's main hall. Acacia followed, maybe out of sheer spite.
“S-Sis... She... she is...”
Algernon laid slumped against the wooden bark wall, his body and face contracted into straining agony. His clothes were hot and wet all over, sweat and tears and drool and muck becoming one indiscernible sludge that had wrung itself all over him. His parasite stood as straight as a pin, gnawing on his forehead so tightly he was almost bleeding. Purple gas had condensed on his clothes into droplets and stains, and his ever rising fever made it cling to him like a second skin.
The moment Sage laid eyes on him, he went all pale.
“Doc, what's the matter? Help him!”
“I... I'm sorry, but... I can't. He's... We'll have to wait.” The Sage hung his head low. “Please excuse me.”
“Why isn't he doing anything?” “The poor kid... I hope he'll be alright.” “I wish I could help him!” “Mom, is this dying?” “Sono otoko warui deshou ka?” “Lousy no good quack acting so important last meeting – ”
Sage carried Algernon into his room, lying him down on the bed after clearing some flasks off of it, and got him out of his stained clothes. He was carrying a locker, which Sage had enough mind to keep on his person instead of throwing it onto a pile in the corner. He felt his head (apprehensive not to get bitten by the... by that) and concluded the fever was only getting worse.
“It's about time you explained your schtick to me, doctor.”
“...I wanted to keep this a secret for as long as possible, Acacia, but your persistence leaves me no choice.” This time, The Sage seemed to have a much better idea of what bottle he needed than any other time. Shoving aside an icebox of vials in front of a small cabin, he rummaged in the bottom shelf for a tiny beaker, sealed off with some flimsy film. It contained brilliant blue crystals that seemed to change shape from the angle you looked at them. “This is a substance I discovered in an old magic book. The ancient recipe calls it “Panacea Placebo,” or something like that. I dubbed it thaumice. This miracle cure can heal any illness or wound, no matter how bad, but only as long as the patient believes in it.”
Theatrically, he waved towards the rest of the room, like the perfect actor. “All of these “potions” are just ordinary herbs, or salt, or water, all mixed with a bit of thaumice. They're all for show, only to make people think I have an array of tinctures and ointments for every little qualm. I could throw all of this away and still cure people if only they'd buy it.”
He showed her the stacks of books on his desk. Names and species of all of Hearth's citizens, some simply labeled 'one-of,' and endless lists of illnesses they'd had and what The Sage prescribed them. “I have to keep track of everything I allocate to which disease, and for which species, just too keep good faith. I definitely wasn't happy when my medicine didn't just cure your mist-related symptoms, but also your Quad addiction. I had Raeves in my office only a day after you told someone about it to hear if it'd be able to help him quit woodpecking.
“It's all fake, Acacia. That's why I've been walking around with a hacking cough, I can't cure myself because I know that. That's why I didn't want you as an assistant, because then I wouldn't be able to cure you either. As for your friend, he's out cold, so he can't believe much of anything. I'll have to wait until he wakes up.
“Acacia, since the secret's out anyway for you, could you watch your friend for a while? I think I have an apology to make, and I need to get my thoughts straightened out before I say anything on the matter. Lying is a second nature to me, so don't expect me to be gone long. If he starts shivering, that's normal. It'll take a while for him to sweat out all the fever and the fog, so just leave him be. Whatever you do, don't cover him up. It'll only make things more tedious. The moment he wakes up, just give him anything you think he could swallow. I worked with red leaves for most mist incidents so far so look for something like that if you want to stick to my story.”
Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 3: Las Orbitas] - MaxieSatan - 01-02-2012
Originally posted on MSPA by MrGuy.
So Algernon was gone. That was fine. He was just going to kill her anyway. He'd probably die, but that didn't matter, the whole Cherry thing had been an act anyway no it hadn't shut up. Holly (Cherry) looked around the swamp and saw
Lots and lots of trees and mud.
She cursed and kept walking. There's nothing out there can't you hear it cackling she was just a little panicked, nothing to worry about. She'd find shelter, and then she'd make a camp, and then everything would be okay until the killing started again, flesh being torn from bone with that sublime ripping. Cherry (Holly) looked around the swamp and saw
The same trees and mud.
That wasn't right of course it is you're going in circles but she had been going straight your broken mind is playing tricks on you again, tallbirch Ironwood neither and the cackling stopped again. Holly was tempted to sit down, but she kept moving. If she stopped someone would probably kill her. She had to find shelter can't you see there is no shelter there never was it was his plan all along he'd never let you out.
Cherry leaned against a tree, one hand on the bark and the other against her face. He'd never let you out you idiot it was hopeless She shook her head, anger welling up inside of her, and screamed incoherently at nobody in particular. This turned out to be a bad idea, as a very large stag beetle in a very dirty tuxedo staggered into sight and towards the elf. Her eyes widened and she bounded off in the opposite direction, thinking of the five hundred different ways a direct confrontation would go wrong.
Eventually, she came to a stop, positive that the beetle had stopped following her. She bent over to catch her breath, then stood up, looked around, and saw
The same trees and mud
The same trees
The same you will die here you will never find shelter
Cherry Holly (Holly Cherry) cursed loudly and kept storming through the swamp the same swamp the same everything here is the goddamn same and slapped herself in the face. "Calm down," she muttered, "things are only going to get worse if you panic. At least things aren't as bad as they could be." And it was true. The cackling stopped (again).
After a couple more deep breaths, she began walking again, she was going to die she was going to die secure in the knowledge that if she just found shelter she would die she would be fine. She managed to spy a cave and headed inside, climbing a small slope; the swamp muck and mist ceased a few feet in. There were a few other survivors there who would murder her within a second, quick, act while you can but none she recognized; she imagined they were either new, or had fled a different settlement. "Um, hello!"
The apparent leader of the group, a middle-aged man in full military uniform, smiled and waved. "Welcome to our little camp, miss. You from one of these battles to the death, too?" She nodded and sat down and killed them all to save herself she had to save herself, noting the presence of a glowing ball of gas, a wooden shoe full of tiny men, and a purple woman with a mechanical arm and six eyes. They shared some fried mushrooms with her-- "We've been here a while", said the woman as she placed a hand halfway through the gas-ball, "and Xhblrqsbs here's figured out how to help us when any of them turns out poisonous." Cherry smiled and sat down, taking a crudely-carved stone plate, and began eating.
Tick.
Tock.
Tick. Tock.
"Um, does anyone hear that?"
"Hear what, Ms. Ironwood?"
Tick tock tick tock tick tock
She's back and you're going to die Holly frowned and chewed her lower lip. But that wasn't possible, was it? The swamp would have disrupted optimal bond desynchronization of her nanites or whatever the exhibit had said the exhibit was lying he put it there to trick you and this made sense to Holly, he would do whatever he found amusing, they're with her they set up a trap for you they probably spiked the mushrooms with sedatives but she was still awake, and Cherry knew that if they had she needed to strike before they could strike, kill them before they could kill her.
tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock
Her anger, burning the wooden shoe and all within it to ash; her claw stabbing the woman's eyes out, three at a time; her fear enveloping the military man and quickly being sucked inside of him, making it trivial to slice him apart from the neck to the crotch, each incision drawing more blood, until the cut was deep enough that if you were willing you could open him up and dissect him.
Finally, she placed a hand into the ball of gas, and failed utterly to convert it. She tried again, and failed again. It simply floated there, seemingly oblivious to what had happened. It certainly wasn't trying to harm her.
Then the gas wasn't involved, Holly decided, and she slumped on the ground. The ticking had stopped, finally, so it was probably safe to rest; their trap had failed.
------------------------
Outside of the cave, a man-- or, rather, an approximation of an approximation of a man, formed of vines and malice-- stopped for a moment. She was in there, it was certain; the only question was whether it was worthwhile to go inside.
Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 4: Misty Swamp] - MalkyTop - 01-05-2012
Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t remember you,” he told the girl next to him.
The girl was someone important. But her features were ever changing and he couldn’t quite grasp what her voice sounded like. But she was someone important. “I’m sure you’ll remember soon enough,” she said in what was probably a consoling manner. Everybody talked to him in a consoling manner. He tended to need some sort of consoling for one reason or another.
He shook his head. “Once I forget something, it’s gone forever. I can’t get it back.”
I can remember for the both of us.
“How pessimistic of you.”
“Well, it’s true.”
The girl laughed, which seemed to him a very inappropriate reaction. And so he turned away and pouted.
Do you hate me?
“Aw. I’m sorry.” The girl’s face seemed to be stabilizing. But, at the same time, she seemed to be getting further away. “Did I hurt your feelings?”
But we’re partners.
“No…it’s just…”
I help you, you help me.
“I don’t like it when someone knows more about me than I know about them.”
I need you.
“Can’t you give me a name, at least?”
You need me.
“Please?”
”Algernon?”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Algernon groaned and woke up.
“It looked like you were mumbling. I’m sorry if I woke you up.”
“’S cold…where’re m’clothes…” He blinked. His vision cleared. There was a slim man…wait, no, it was a woman. She turned around with something in her hand and a smile. Forced smile? No, it was just a plain smile, probably, a plain smile and something in a bowl.
“Drink this,” she said.
“But my clothes,” Algernon protested, finally fully aware that there was barely anything covering up his skinny frame. His tongue felt swollen and seemed to stick in his throat and he mostly wanted to collapse again because consciousness was shaping up to be a horrible thing right now. He tried covering himself with a blanket that was on the bed, but the woman tugged it away, which seemed rather forward. She held out the bowl again. The liquid was rather pinkish and he could see some sort of flakes of red settling at the bottom.
“What’s this?”
“It’ll make you feel better.”
Who was he to argue with something like that? And so he drank it. And subsequently choked on it.
He leaned back into bed and closed his eyes, but the woman pulled him up again. “No,” she said. “Stay awake.”
“I’m tired,” he whined. “I don’t think I can.”
“Then let’s talk.”
His mind was already feeling much clearer, and as he thought back a little, he realized something.
“How’d you know my name?” he asked.
“Have you seen any of the others?” said the woman at approximately the same time.
They stared at each other.
“You don’t remember?” the woman said in a tone that balanced on the edge of incredulity.
Yes, there was that phrase again that he had been hearing far too often during his stay here. That cold realization and the awkward silence and the hasty covering-up so that he was kept in the dark about some horrible secret that would surely be too much for his sensitive heart to take. “What ‘others’?” he asked and, predictably, she said, “Never mind.”
He stared sullenly downwards, which reminded him that he was still rather naked and cold, so he stared off to the side instead.
Acacia, for her part, struggled to think of another subject to talk about and then decided it would be better to say nothing at all. She had thought that Algernon accepted the brew with the knowledge that she was who she was, as introduced by the Controller. They certainly never had much opportunity to chat, so she thought maybe that was why he seemed to trust her, despite the whole battle-to-the-death thing which was all in the past anyways so did it even matter anymore? But no, he forgot everything. And nobody apparently saw fit to clue him in on any remote detail.
Why not? Why didn’t anybody ever tell him? That seemed ridiculous. Maybe she should go ahead and reveal the whole secret. But then again, if she told him, would he still trust her, trust the medicine she gave him? Hm. Maybe she could tell him after he was all cured.
“…Do you know someone named Cherry?” he suddenly asked.
Who the hell names their kid Cherry? “No, sorry,” she replied. He seemed to look confused and disappointed at the same time.
“Well, I was, uh, out there, you know, with her. And then I left her. I think she’s still out there and wandering…so…do you think someone can go look for her? I probably shouldn’t have left her alone…”
No, nobody’s going to go out and find your girlfriend because it’s dangerous out there and judging by what your state was when you came in, she’s probably dangerous too and just sending people out with no clue at all what area she could be in would be just stupid. “I’ll talk to someone and see what I can do.”
Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 4: Misty Swamp] - Schazer - 01-13-2012
Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.
Dear Countess,
Enough lying around. Get up.
Regards,
The Message
***
Dear Countess,
Get up. An hour's swilling about was quite sufficient for me to get accommodated. Do you intend to complete the Controller's orders by- here, the words scorched black somewhere behind Countess' eyes juddered a bit, as though laughter shook their hand- no, I cannot read minds. I merely languish in lazy ones as I am doing now, if you were interested. I've no need to spread you in front of me like a dossier's contents, Countess; your psychopathy is plain to see. It is in how you walk, how you talk, how you made sure your gin trap face could always manage a sneer when you built it cog by cog
You're unfit for civil company, plain and simple. I doubt the Controller understands how hard it is for a monster like you, else why would he have set you such an impossible task? The most mistrust you can instil is theirs in you, and that only leads to a mob concerned with your swift destruction.
It's simply unfair, is it not? And isn't it nice that you found someone like me to understand?
Eagerly awaiting your reply,
The Message
"You're wrong," chirped the Countess eventually, modulated voice as sing-song as ever. She rose to her feet, with much difficulty and squelching of mud. The dagger-tips struggled for purchase in the mire, and her weight drove them in almost to her chassis again. "You're wrong about him and you're wrong about me." The amalgam pulled her arms clear, at any rate, and began picking mud from her locked-up joints. Exposed moving parts in a wet environment. Definitely not good. "Now tell me the way back to Holm."
A pause. Then:
Dear Countess,
I did not call in a favour from those Airstrip hooligans just so you could enjoy a circuitous meander round Holm. I am doing you an unprecedented favour by doing all of the legwork for your job. Your charges are not in Holm; ergo, you have no business there.
Unless, of course, you found it in your head to kill the Chamaelanimus. But, I sorely doubt that.
Regards-
"The what?"
She was upright, albeit sinking dagger-feet first as fast as she could pull them out one by one. It was progress, both of them separately conceded.
The Message
P.S Again, your reaction reveals all, including little reason to elaborate. For now. Remind me when you've made some progress away from Holm, and we'll try again, shall we?
Countess ignored the Message, to the point where the effort of pretending she was too busy dragging herself up onto the boardwalk to pay attention was messing with her ability to conquer the slimy planks.
***
"Tell me about that... Chameolo-thing."
Dear Countess,
You've barely walked five steps. Keep walking, and perhaps imagine what you would do to me had I a more tangible form. For you, I suspect, it would be a far more pleasant train of thought.
Kind regards,
The Message
***
"You're quiet," the amalgam sulked, after an hour or so's silent trudging. The Countess hated a compulsory trudge; it was impossible to inject any elegance into the motion. Message suspected (rightly) that its new host would resent it - whether incessantly snarky, patronisingly helpful, or stubbornly silent, and said nothing.
"Are we there yet?"
A pause, then:
Dear Countess,
No.
Sincerely-
The Countess jabbed her claws as far as she could get them into her head, screeching like a braking locomotive. An utter lack of consternation on Message's part only made her angrier.
Message might've smiled to the sound of rude blades upon dull steel cogs. Or it might not've.
Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 4: Misty Swamp] - Woffles - 02-01-2012
Originally posted on MSPA by Wojjan.
I'll reserve