Cloudsea - The Chronicle of Alice Van Vaugen

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Cloudsea - The Chronicle of Alice Van Vaugen

NotABear

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#263

RE: Cloudsea - The Chronicle of Alice Van Vaugen

08-24-2017, 02:37 AM

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Earl's house was a mess. Judith had to wedge her way in, which is a bit of a worry in itself. Most doors were oft to submit to Judith's advances. Her muse chuckled at that. She could still make jokes, so that means it wasn't absolutely dire. . . but . . .

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Earl's living room, which was already quite sparse, was practically empty. Everything had been thrown own or otherwise stuffed into other rooms. Judith could only figure that it was Earl's current level of power that had made it so hard to push her way in here. It was like he was projecting a shield. . . Or a field?

Earl was floating. He glowed with an internal light, as little flickers of electricity jumped from his body to pages of paper, keeping them aloft with the static energy in the incredibly dense, heavy air. . . His muse was curled around him, practically a real, physical creature with the nimbus it currently put off- Jude wondered if she could touch Fatalism. That was then followed by wondering how hard she'd have to swing to dislodge the muse. . .

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Judith shifted uncomfortably. She didn't like this line of conversation anymore. Earl's books were not perfect by any means. . . but they had so much information. So much stuff fit, just right. In some cases, he described events perfectly. Things he could not possibly know about. Things that, for example, only Judith knew.

He was also 'incredibly lucky' as Katie would put it. But Judith has seen the kind of things he's subjected himself to. He really shouldn't be alive- and his explanation for it- no matter how ridiculous, how insane. . .

Judith thought about Alice. Cute girl. Nice, polite smile. What little she has heard of her makes her so much more interesting. So much more. . . appealing. But then she thinks about those eyes. And she thinks about Earl's eyes. And how he would always glance at his right hand before doing something stupid. She thought about how she could just get lost in those eyes of Alice's. . .

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Earl blinked. His sunglasses had slid down his face, and whatever he was smoking last had long turned into ashes between his teeth. Everything stopped. The hum of static, the movement of the dissected book pages around him, the swirling of the small inexplicable clouds over him. . . He blinked again, and his shoulders shook with something between a sound of utter shock and terrified humor. His muse shivered, and turned into something resembling grey haze, before dissolving back into his body.

His feet touched the floor and he started brushing himself off as the ashes scattered across his shirt. He shook his shirt until it was rumpled and crumpled just right. He fished his smoking pen out of his pants pocket, and rolled something into the end of it. Pages started to flutter to the ground, and Judith felt a great weight lifting itself from her- like some sort of large beast had her pinned and was told to move.

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Earl had wandered over. He leaned up and smooched her on the cheek, then grabbed her mechanical hand and manipulated the thumb so that it ejected flame so he could light his cigarette.

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Jude reached over and hefted Earl up. . . and put him under her mechanical arm, carrying him like a chunk of debris. In response, Earl reached up with a hand and batted at her face. She resisted the urge to toss him out the front door.

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The sky was dim, and dark clouds hung in the distance, obscuring the world around the island. . .

Earl was already back on his feet, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a short punching dagger that resembled a sharpened pencil. Judith's mechanical arm opened up, a barrel sliding out into her palm.

They barely even registered the shadows.

Sebastian spiraled around, deflecting a claw strike with his blade, a series of shadows following up behind him as he wavered and flicked back and forth up and down the street, blades of concentrated shadow stabbing into these strange masses of meat and metal. . .

A large arm knocked him over, slamming face first into the ground, he rolled and stood back up, spitting blood as one of his shadows flickered out of existence, torn into shreds by the claws that would have easily killed him had he not been manipulating the light to obscure where he was actually standing.

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True guided Sebastian's hand, living inside the rapier, it was like they were holding hands. True brought Sebastian's hand to bear on the closest threat. Sebastian took control and rent it asunder, placing a series of shadow blades inside it's chest, then momentarily flaring his power. . .

These blades will cut you in half, monster. Let this truth be heard.

The rippling shadows cut the beast neatly in two, but as he drew away to dodge another attack, Sebastian could see tendons and organs and blood vessels and bits of metal that aren't normally inside meat pulling it back together.

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Sebastian crumpled to the ground. He raised his rapier to block an attack. . . Then laid it down at his side. The beasts hesitated for a moment. Assessing him. His leg was not in any condition to be described as working. One of them reached down, slowly, and took Sebastian's head into it's claw. It was. . . Unusually intimate.

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Ping. . .

Out of the corner of Sebastian's eye, a coin hit the ground, bouncing so hard that the small gemstone in the center of it shattered. A royal. The beasts also were paying attention to it, as it bounced off the ground so hard that it flew up so that the beast holding Sebastian in it's claw could see the barrel of a gun through the hole in the coin.

The bullet passed through the coin, the forces ripping the soft gold into shrapnel as the metal found it's mark. The beast screeched and let go of Sebastian, who rolled over and backed up as quickly as he can, while a colorful cloak of feathers drifted down in front of him, the gentle sound of claws on stone clicking away as Katie came to rest. Roost? Rest. Ha ha.

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Sebastian pulled a small bag out of his pocket and tossed it up to Katie, who caught it with her free hand, the other one still training a gun on the beasts who had yet to make any moves. He wondered why. Katie clicked her beak, then gritted it.

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The beasts shifted. . . then slowly turned away, and started to move away, then picked up speed and leapt away-

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