Re: QUIETUS [S!5] [Round 1: Godsworn Valley]
04-15-2012, 01:02 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-09-2013, 07:17 AM by AgentBlue.)
Originally posted on MSPA by Agent1022.
A dark, empty world; a sanctum of silence and dust within the bustling facility plugged into Rachel’s body-
-sucked away as if poured through a wire-mesh screen of reality, diced darkness bleeding away in an instant – the same moment that she sensed the insistent needs of the facility cease – a part of her rejoicing momentarily in newfound freedom, before another drowned it out in grieving for those who would die. The rest of her simply gaped at the Outsider’s tableau of chaos, while the sun in her chest unfairly stayed in its even, unchanging pulse when her long-gone heart should have been pounding fit to escape. It was a broken space in between the worlds, the place where they had been parked – the muddied-heat world, heat death realm of the Outsider; where things did not so much matter as being comprised of the opposite, stretching far away on the continuum of reality. When the Outsider spoke, their words were leaden bullets and funereal tones, cries of hatred and knocks on the door of unhappiness; like futility, curiosity and morbidity mashed into a sullen paste and spoon-fed directly to the consciousness, without the common courtesy of passing through so much as any of the accepted senses. Her mind juddered with the ideas/concepts/impressions forced through it, like so much syrup through an aperture (and which was which was never clear) – if she could have turned her eyes from the Outsider’s pronouncements, she would, yet she knew it would have made no difference-
Then they were falling; no, she was falling now, tilting, landing roughly in the dirt on her side, her shoulder, landing on hard-packed earth that was like stone. She lay unmoving for a moment, and when it became clear that she was not going to die, at least not any time soon, bit back a whimper of pain…
Slowly, Rachel clambered to her knees. She cast her eyes about her surroundings: a sparse stand of trees decorated the ridge she knelt upon, shielding, inadequately, an equally sparse clearing where a tall building seemed to have sunk into the ground some time ago, overgrown with vines and shrubbery.
“Ah, with us so soon?”, came a voice behind her. A firm hand clasped her shoulder, and turned her in one neat twist, so that she was facing the voice’s owner and down lower on the ground in a trice. She looked into a face stained with grease and old camouflage, appraising her with brown eyes-
The soldier spoke, somewhat uncertainly. “Come along. You’re a little early, but…” The sentence trailed off into nothingness as he extended a hand. Cautiously, Rachel took it, and pulled herself up – if he noted the cold metal ports, the soldier graciously didn’t mention it – and followed through a collapsing archway into the sunken building.
Within, the slanted floors were occupied by machinery and clutter: a compacted dirt floor was tiled roughly with stone to make level generators, computing devices, maps and charts laid out on felt tables with pins and strings tied taut, and, looking completely out of place in the center of the off-center room, an altar, tastefully decorated with tassels.
Slowly, she fought to speak; to use a voice left untended for the long time in the dark generator chamber: “Wh…what is…”
Turning to her, the soldier smiled for the first time, and gave his reply: “This…is the Temple of Obscura, friend.”
A dark, empty world; a sanctum of silence and dust within the bustling facility plugged into Rachel’s body-
-sucked away as if poured through a wire-mesh screen of reality, diced darkness bleeding away in an instant – the same moment that she sensed the insistent needs of the facility cease – a part of her rejoicing momentarily in newfound freedom, before another drowned it out in grieving for those who would die. The rest of her simply gaped at the Outsider’s tableau of chaos, while the sun in her chest unfairly stayed in its even, unchanging pulse when her long-gone heart should have been pounding fit to escape. It was a broken space in between the worlds, the place where they had been parked – the muddied-heat world, heat death realm of the Outsider; where things did not so much matter as being comprised of the opposite, stretching far away on the continuum of reality. When the Outsider spoke, their words were leaden bullets and funereal tones, cries of hatred and knocks on the door of unhappiness; like futility, curiosity and morbidity mashed into a sullen paste and spoon-fed directly to the consciousness, without the common courtesy of passing through so much as any of the accepted senses. Her mind juddered with the ideas/concepts/impressions forced through it, like so much syrup through an aperture (and which was which was never clear) – if she could have turned her eyes from the Outsider’s pronouncements, she would, yet she knew it would have made no difference-
Then they were falling; no, she was falling now, tilting, landing roughly in the dirt on her side, her shoulder, landing on hard-packed earth that was like stone. She lay unmoving for a moment, and when it became clear that she was not going to die, at least not any time soon, bit back a whimper of pain…
Slowly, Rachel clambered to her knees. She cast her eyes about her surroundings: a sparse stand of trees decorated the ridge she knelt upon, shielding, inadequately, an equally sparse clearing where a tall building seemed to have sunk into the ground some time ago, overgrown with vines and shrubbery.
“Ah, with us so soon?”, came a voice behind her. A firm hand clasped her shoulder, and turned her in one neat twist, so that she was facing the voice’s owner and down lower on the ground in a trice. She looked into a face stained with grease and old camouflage, appraising her with brown eyes-
The soldier spoke, somewhat uncertainly. “Come along. You’re a little early, but…” The sentence trailed off into nothingness as he extended a hand. Cautiously, Rachel took it, and pulled herself up – if he noted the cold metal ports, the soldier graciously didn’t mention it – and followed through a collapsing archway into the sunken building.
Within, the slanted floors were occupied by machinery and clutter: a compacted dirt floor was tiled roughly with stone to make level generators, computing devices, maps and charts laid out on felt tables with pins and strings tied taut, and, looking completely out of place in the center of the off-center room, an altar, tastefully decorated with tassels.
Slowly, she fought to speak; to use a voice left untended for the long time in the dark generator chamber: “Wh…what is…”
Turning to her, the soldier smiled for the first time, and gave his reply: “This…is the Temple of Obscura, friend.”
Spoiler
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So very British / But then again | People are machines Machines are people | Oh hai there | There's no time
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Superhero 1920s noir | Multigenre Half-Life | Changing the future | Command line interface
Tu ventire felix? | Clockwork for eternity | Explosions in spacetime