Re: The Grand Battle S2G1! [Round Three: Water...place!]
12-13-2010, 04:38 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.
Xadrez silently, awkwardly cut the slab of ivory wall away from the infrastructure of Cyk’Nl. With a gesture he allowed the Ovoid to absorb the stone into four-space; Jen felt Fantha in the back of her mind struggling to take a mental picture of the graceful mathematical language with which Xadrez had recorded his… plan? Observations? Formulas? Neither girl nor worm pretended to understand the spirit’s machinations, but both were content, for now, to allow the situation to play out, if not necessarily assist.
Still, Xadrez’s sense of scale aside, Jen kept half a mind on thinking of a way to save the city. As everything went tan, like an eye closing around her and Xadrez, Jen felt more than a little resentful of her four-dimensional benefactor. Arkal and Kracht, say what you will about their individual neuroses, were at least people, and even Xadrez was beginning to show his softer side, even if it was actually just a harder side. The Ovoid, however, was clearly either operating under a random number generator or else had all the psychological maturity of a three-year-old playing with Legos. There was no real reason, at this time, to forgive the entity for killing her with a dragon and blowing up cities for kicks.
The alternative, of course, was to assume that the Ovoid had some sort of plan, or at least was experimenting in trying to set one up. That was just worryi—
There was a sound and a color that seemed both dismissive and disapproving, and then blue. Jen was riding a dragon in an unspecified direction that she suspected pointed to the tune of Away. A single tan ovoid bobbed nonchalantly next to her. Jen wouldn’t have thought something so geometric could express that much irony, but she had never been much of an artist.
“What am I supposed to say?” growled Jen at the Ovoid; she doubted it would understand the full message, but evidently it was capable of discerning tone. “Whoops, sorry for thinking hostile thoughts, Mr. Entity, sir, will you let me back inside your folds-within-folds if I promise to be nice?” She hesitated briefly, then came to the only decision she could have. “Fuck you, Ovoid.”
Her sword came down in the dragon’s neck, not quite killing it. Its throat released a jet of steam that lightly scalded Jen’s face, which on top of the dragon’s anguished barrel roll did a fairly good job of throwing her off. The ocean surface loomed closer
Tan
And was replaced by a bed of ivory that was, somehow, softer. There was a reptilian yelp, and Jen saw a Cyk’Nlian hurriedly light a torch to examine her.
“Were you sent by the Inscriber?” it hissed. Jen realized with some alarm that she couldn’t hear any screaming or rumbling or any of the things she might hear if she were anywhere near the exterior of Cyk’Nl. This deep, everything was tranquil, insofar as this aged, squinty-eyed lizard was all up in her business.
Jen ignored some things Fanthalion was trying to tell her and addressed the Cyk’Nlian. “This Inscriber of yours… He wouldn’t happen to be a tan fellow, hailing from a place where the stars can be unrolled and hung up on the wall, heralded by a dragon?” she asked.
The lizard nodded excitedly, his flicking tongue cracked and festering slightly from dehydration. “Then have I come to my reward at last? I, the one true priest, the one who stayed?”
Jen gave some serious thought to some things Fanthalion was trying to tell her. “No,” she said. “Your ‘Inscriber’ is nothing but a big ol’ four-dimensional dick. And because you were too stupid to get out of here when it all fell down, you’re going to be the first mosquito smushed against the windshield when the fan hits the… other fan.”
The lizard grabbed her arm: green though he was, for the most part, Jen couldn’t bring herself to feel one iota of sympathy for the wretch. She drew her sword (Kath’s sword, she reminded herself—she was just borrowing it; no worse luck than carrying around a stolen sword) and pressed it up against the creature’s neck. She could almost hear the ticking sound as the priest tried to rationalize these new events with his theology.
Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick ding! “I am being tested,” concluded the lizard; he tried to smile, but the motion of his jaw muscles caused his throat to straighten a little too much against the sword. “Do I need to slay you, then, to gain His approval? If your blood is the cost of entry into the Fourth Land, gladly shall I—“
Jen immediately regretted killing the priest. For one thing, not killing priests is sort of a no-brainer; for another, the creature was only about as threatening than a squirrel during mating season. There was no real reason for it.
Jen had changed.
Fanthalion quite rightly reasoned that she needed comfort food. As she bent over the priest’s body, as though in prayer, something Tan happened, and the body disappeared. In its place was a very disoriented and angry looking Kath.
With both Jen and Kath being equally possessed of the element of surprise, it came down to whose foot (Kath’s, as it turns out) was closer to whose face (Jen’s). The kick was forceful, well-placed, and accompanied by a suitably emphatic cry of “What the fuck!?”; Jen was a bit proud of her mermaid companion. Kath got her sword back, which Jen hoped would be enough to turn around her bad karma, perhaps combined with a sonic bullet to the face.
For all the pain Jen went through allowing Fantha to shape her arm into a jet-powered pincer and back, she always decided that the results were completely worth it. Deprived of some of its power in the open air, the jet blast only did enough to knock Kath across the room. The lizard’s torch went out.
Kath and Jen stood in the silence for a moment. Kath was, perhaps, hoping for her eyes to adjust; Jen was trying not to cry out as Fantha forcefully reshaped her retinae. There was a flash of red as Jen’s new eyes squirted tears and blood, and then everything came into focus in bright reds, blues, and a third color that most definitely wasn’t green. Kath was nowhere to be seen.
Jen turned around. Kath, still blind, seemed to be allowing something invisible to lead her by the hand down a corridor of bone. The mermaid’s sword glowed violet in Fanthavision; Jen followed, stricken with an unease she couldn’t rationalize.
After what could potentially have been ten minutes, Jen, Kath, Fanthalion and the invisible thing came upon a door in a color that definitely wasn’t green. Kath allowed the invisible thing to guide her hand and feel the handle. A gruff, invisible voice echoed, giving Jen a rough idea of the scale of the chamber (very large).
”Goes without saying that in my capacity as a guide I can only lead you to the door. Your blubbery little girl-muscles should be sufficient to open it.”
It was a voice that Jen had heard only twice before, both times before a large and imposing door. Of course, in those situations, she was the one being led, and there wasn’t an ominous sound of reptilian breathing on the other side of the door.
Wyrmlog:
J: Fantha!
F: What? Whose voice is that?
J: My eyes! Return them to normal!
F: Whatever you say, dear.
/wyrmlog
Pain and redness for a bit;
Back in the visual spectrum, the chamber was no longer dark. It was illuminated by the very visible radiant silhouette of the Green Man, who stood three feet tall next to Kath like a hole in the world.
Jen came to a sneaking realization that everything was as bad as it seemed. She saw red for a bit, then became blue, and found herself unable to do anything but watch.
Kath opened the door, just a crack.
There was a putrid smell like some strange new bodily fluids that could not have existed in anything that gave a shit about homeostasis. The smell itself seemed to watch Jen, to hold her in judgment. Kath seemed not to smell it. She opened the door the rest of the way and walked through.
As soon as Kath fell out of sight, Cyk’Nl shattered, like shattering was the only thing it had ever meant to do in all its centuries of history. Jen saw herself as just another piece, and found herself understanding Xadrez’s perspective.
Ta--
”Quit it, you!” The Green Man snapped his fingers; everything went still, and the tan receded. The Green Man turned his silhouette to face Jen. ”I never forget a face. Long live the queen, eh?”
”Hi,” said Jen, awkwardly. “What, um—“
”Tell you the truth, this is kind of awkward,” said the Green Man. ”I mean, I been busy. Turnaround’s been pretty high these days, as we seem to be past all common sense what might make us want to settled down and reign for a hundred years. No, not these kids, you new breed can’t sit down long enough for the crown to give you a tan line before you’re off getting’ yourself killed in battle, or in your case,” (the Green Man laughed here) ”Gettin’ dismembered by a dragon. Understand we don’t have time to double-check for resurrections in each instance, ‘specially if the job gets done outside o’ the Place and its territories.”
Jen heard herself, distantly, saying that no, she didn’t understand, why don’t you just say it.
”The chick with the legs is a bit old to serve as the new chosen, but she’s got that spark, don’t she? She’s gotten her sword wet already, so that’ll save us some time. Represents a whole new paradigm shift, if you ask me. Not that anyone does, ask, that is; I’m just here to lead folks to the door.”
Jen tried to run; it all seemed so easy in her head. She’d run. She’d overtake Kath, kill her if she had to, eat her if she wanted to, take her sword (rightfully, having been the one to kill her), fight and kill the thing inside of Cyk’Nl that smelled like the burn ward at a hospital for whales, travel deeper and deeper into the labyrinth as she’d been doing since she was eleven years old and finally come out among the Green and be home and not be dead and not be a zombie and still be the queen.
Instead, here’s what happened:
”Speaking of doors, how’s about I show you the way out of here before you get yourself impaled, eh? For old times’ sake.”
The way out of here, as it turned out, was Tan.
Xadrez noted Jen’s return with little surprise; he noted the look of hellbent fury on her face with even less surprised; he realized with a fair bit of surprise that she was very, very serious this time around when he attempted to say,
Welcome back, your Majesty
But didn’t get a word into the dispatch before being interrupted by a pretty definitive-sounding
“Fuck.
You.
And your shit.”
The beige parted for Jen as though it was afraid of her. She walked out of four-space onto a rooftop on Hydresther. Bits of Cyk’Nl were falling from the sky in earnest, seeming to revel in impaling or squashing the straggling evacuees with the sort of architectural deliberacy you only see in theocracies, but none of them hit Jen. Perhaps they were frightened too.
Xadrez silently, awkwardly cut the slab of ivory wall away from the infrastructure of Cyk’Nl. With a gesture he allowed the Ovoid to absorb the stone into four-space; Jen felt Fantha in the back of her mind struggling to take a mental picture of the graceful mathematical language with which Xadrez had recorded his… plan? Observations? Formulas? Neither girl nor worm pretended to understand the spirit’s machinations, but both were content, for now, to allow the situation to play out, if not necessarily assist.
Still, Xadrez’s sense of scale aside, Jen kept half a mind on thinking of a way to save the city. As everything went tan, like an eye closing around her and Xadrez, Jen felt more than a little resentful of her four-dimensional benefactor. Arkal and Kracht, say what you will about their individual neuroses, were at least people, and even Xadrez was beginning to show his softer side, even if it was actually just a harder side. The Ovoid, however, was clearly either operating under a random number generator or else had all the psychological maturity of a three-year-old playing with Legos. There was no real reason, at this time, to forgive the entity for killing her with a dragon and blowing up cities for kicks.
The alternative, of course, was to assume that the Ovoid had some sort of plan, or at least was experimenting in trying to set one up. That was just worryi—
There was a sound and a color that seemed both dismissive and disapproving, and then blue. Jen was riding a dragon in an unspecified direction that she suspected pointed to the tune of Away. A single tan ovoid bobbed nonchalantly next to her. Jen wouldn’t have thought something so geometric could express that much irony, but she had never been much of an artist.
“What am I supposed to say?” growled Jen at the Ovoid; she doubted it would understand the full message, but evidently it was capable of discerning tone. “Whoops, sorry for thinking hostile thoughts, Mr. Entity, sir, will you let me back inside your folds-within-folds if I promise to be nice?” She hesitated briefly, then came to the only decision she could have. “Fuck you, Ovoid.”
Her sword came down in the dragon’s neck, not quite killing it. Its throat released a jet of steam that lightly scalded Jen’s face, which on top of the dragon’s anguished barrel roll did a fairly good job of throwing her off. The ocean surface loomed closer
Tan
And was replaced by a bed of ivory that was, somehow, softer. There was a reptilian yelp, and Jen saw a Cyk’Nlian hurriedly light a torch to examine her.
“Were you sent by the Inscriber?” it hissed. Jen realized with some alarm that she couldn’t hear any screaming or rumbling or any of the things she might hear if she were anywhere near the exterior of Cyk’Nl. This deep, everything was tranquil, insofar as this aged, squinty-eyed lizard was all up in her business.
Jen ignored some things Fanthalion was trying to tell her and addressed the Cyk’Nlian. “This Inscriber of yours… He wouldn’t happen to be a tan fellow, hailing from a place where the stars can be unrolled and hung up on the wall, heralded by a dragon?” she asked.
The lizard nodded excitedly, his flicking tongue cracked and festering slightly from dehydration. “Then have I come to my reward at last? I, the one true priest, the one who stayed?”
Jen gave some serious thought to some things Fanthalion was trying to tell her. “No,” she said. “Your ‘Inscriber’ is nothing but a big ol’ four-dimensional dick. And because you were too stupid to get out of here when it all fell down, you’re going to be the first mosquito smushed against the windshield when the fan hits the… other fan.”
The lizard grabbed her arm: green though he was, for the most part, Jen couldn’t bring herself to feel one iota of sympathy for the wretch. She drew her sword (Kath’s sword, she reminded herself—she was just borrowing it; no worse luck than carrying around a stolen sword) and pressed it up against the creature’s neck. She could almost hear the ticking sound as the priest tried to rationalize these new events with his theology.
Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick ding! “I am being tested,” concluded the lizard; he tried to smile, but the motion of his jaw muscles caused his throat to straighten a little too much against the sword. “Do I need to slay you, then, to gain His approval? If your blood is the cost of entry into the Fourth Land, gladly shall I—“
Jen immediately regretted killing the priest. For one thing, not killing priests is sort of a no-brainer; for another, the creature was only about as threatening than a squirrel during mating season. There was no real reason for it.
Jen had changed.
Fanthalion quite rightly reasoned that she needed comfort food. As she bent over the priest’s body, as though in prayer, something Tan happened, and the body disappeared. In its place was a very disoriented and angry looking Kath.
With both Jen and Kath being equally possessed of the element of surprise, it came down to whose foot (Kath’s, as it turns out) was closer to whose face (Jen’s). The kick was forceful, well-placed, and accompanied by a suitably emphatic cry of “What the fuck!?”; Jen was a bit proud of her mermaid companion. Kath got her sword back, which Jen hoped would be enough to turn around her bad karma, perhaps combined with a sonic bullet to the face.
For all the pain Jen went through allowing Fantha to shape her arm into a jet-powered pincer and back, she always decided that the results were completely worth it. Deprived of some of its power in the open air, the jet blast only did enough to knock Kath across the room. The lizard’s torch went out.
Kath and Jen stood in the silence for a moment. Kath was, perhaps, hoping for her eyes to adjust; Jen was trying not to cry out as Fantha forcefully reshaped her retinae. There was a flash of red as Jen’s new eyes squirted tears and blood, and then everything came into focus in bright reds, blues, and a third color that most definitely wasn’t green. Kath was nowhere to be seen.
Jen turned around. Kath, still blind, seemed to be allowing something invisible to lead her by the hand down a corridor of bone. The mermaid’s sword glowed violet in Fanthavision; Jen followed, stricken with an unease she couldn’t rationalize.
After what could potentially have been ten minutes, Jen, Kath, Fanthalion and the invisible thing came upon a door in a color that definitely wasn’t green. Kath allowed the invisible thing to guide her hand and feel the handle. A gruff, invisible voice echoed, giving Jen a rough idea of the scale of the chamber (very large).
”Goes without saying that in my capacity as a guide I can only lead you to the door. Your blubbery little girl-muscles should be sufficient to open it.”
It was a voice that Jen had heard only twice before, both times before a large and imposing door. Of course, in those situations, she was the one being led, and there wasn’t an ominous sound of reptilian breathing on the other side of the door.
Wyrmlog:
J: Fantha!
F: What? Whose voice is that?
J: My eyes! Return them to normal!
F: Whatever you say, dear.
/wyrmlog
Pain and redness for a bit;
Back in the visual spectrum, the chamber was no longer dark. It was illuminated by the very visible radiant silhouette of the Green Man, who stood three feet tall next to Kath like a hole in the world.
Jen came to a sneaking realization that everything was as bad as it seemed. She saw red for a bit, then became blue, and found herself unable to do anything but watch.
Kath opened the door, just a crack.
There was a putrid smell like some strange new bodily fluids that could not have existed in anything that gave a shit about homeostasis. The smell itself seemed to watch Jen, to hold her in judgment. Kath seemed not to smell it. She opened the door the rest of the way and walked through.
As soon as Kath fell out of sight, Cyk’Nl shattered, like shattering was the only thing it had ever meant to do in all its centuries of history. Jen saw herself as just another piece, and found herself understanding Xadrez’s perspective.
Ta--
”Quit it, you!” The Green Man snapped his fingers; everything went still, and the tan receded. The Green Man turned his silhouette to face Jen. ”I never forget a face. Long live the queen, eh?”
”Hi,” said Jen, awkwardly. “What, um—“
”Tell you the truth, this is kind of awkward,” said the Green Man. ”I mean, I been busy. Turnaround’s been pretty high these days, as we seem to be past all common sense what might make us want to settled down and reign for a hundred years. No, not these kids, you new breed can’t sit down long enough for the crown to give you a tan line before you’re off getting’ yourself killed in battle, or in your case,” (the Green Man laughed here) ”Gettin’ dismembered by a dragon. Understand we don’t have time to double-check for resurrections in each instance, ‘specially if the job gets done outside o’ the Place and its territories.”
Jen heard herself, distantly, saying that no, she didn’t understand, why don’t you just say it.
”The chick with the legs is a bit old to serve as the new chosen, but she’s got that spark, don’t she? She’s gotten her sword wet already, so that’ll save us some time. Represents a whole new paradigm shift, if you ask me. Not that anyone does, ask, that is; I’m just here to lead folks to the door.”
Jen tried to run; it all seemed so easy in her head. She’d run. She’d overtake Kath, kill her if she had to, eat her if she wanted to, take her sword (rightfully, having been the one to kill her), fight and kill the thing inside of Cyk’Nl that smelled like the burn ward at a hospital for whales, travel deeper and deeper into the labyrinth as she’d been doing since she was eleven years old and finally come out among the Green and be home and not be dead and not be a zombie and still be the queen.
Instead, here’s what happened:
”Speaking of doors, how’s about I show you the way out of here before you get yourself impaled, eh? For old times’ sake.”
The way out of here, as it turned out, was Tan.
Xadrez noted Jen’s return with little surprise; he noted the look of hellbent fury on her face with even less surprised; he realized with a fair bit of surprise that she was very, very serious this time around when he attempted to say,
Welcome back, your Majesty
But didn’t get a word into the dispatch before being interrupted by a pretty definitive-sounding
“Fuck.
You.
And your shit.”
The beige parted for Jen as though it was afraid of her. She walked out of four-space onto a rooftop on Hydresther. Bits of Cyk’Nl were falling from the sky in earnest, seeming to revel in impaling or squashing the straggling evacuees with the sort of architectural deliberacy you only see in theocracies, but none of them hit Jen. Perhaps they were frightened too.