Re: The Great Belligerency [Round 1: The Rainy Place]
09-13-2010, 01:07 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by slipsicle.
Phil and the girl continued wandering through the Forest of Hands in silence, the former ever-alert for whatever else might be waiting for them in the softly swaying limbs.
With Phil's attention devoted to purely external threats, he never noticed Julia's darting eyes become more deliberate in their focus.
To their right, the twitching hands were suddenly disturbed, as though something had moved through them. Phil swung his rifle towards the disturbance, and Julia gasped accordingly. He motioned for her to let go; she would only slow him down, if another fight broke out. She obeyed. Then she screamed.
Out of the forest behind her, hands shot out, wrapping themselves around her legs. They pulled, knocking her to the ground. Phil swung around just in time to see Julia, fear plastered across her face, one hand reaching out to him as she was pulled into the forest. She had just enough time to yell, "Phil!" before disappearing. Silence fell, her screams cut short, the Forest of Hands betraying nothing of what had just happened.
Phil could do nothing but stand there, impotent.
---
Further in the forest, a young girl pulled herself up from the ground, a pile of dead and useless hand-trees nearby. She was a good distance away from the path where she'd left Phil. As she stood, her attention seemed to be fixated on a point hidden by the hand-trees before her. She hesitated for a moment, and then she moved. It was a movement more sensed than seen; the woman transformed into a blur which weaved seamlessly through the forest, disturbing nothing, completely silent.
The blur stopped as it entered a clearing, and the girl surveyed her surroundings. Before her, an enormous door stood, closed. Its surface seemed to shift constantly, and whatever material it was made of seemed to absorb any sound in the area. She could feel the aura of silence becoming deeper and more... substantial, as she approached.
A figure sat at its base. She could not make out any of its features, as its face was a worn porcelain mask, pitted and cracked, whatever expression it once carried lost to time. She moved up to the door, and placed a single finger on its shifting surface.
"No."
She whirled, startled at the voice. An upside-down woman, hanging from seemingly nothing at all, greeted her.
"You and the others, you do not belong here. That door is not for you. We are waiting... we have waited so long, but the multiverse is... emptying. They do not come. We are few now. You, and your companions, you are not what we require. You must leave."
"We are unable." The girl's voice was different. Harsher, more confident. She now held herself differently as well. There was more strength in her posture, a body tightly coiled and prepared to fight or run, if necessary. She continued, "We have been brought here against our will by a power we do not understand. I have been searching for an escape. This door," she gestured, "appeared on my sensors; there does not appear to be anything my instruments know how to measure beyond it. It is the most promising escape method I've yet discovered." She turned her back on the woman, focusing on the door once more. "I do not know who you are. Quite honestly, I don't expect that will matter much in the long run. All I ask is you tell me where this door leads."
"Everywhere."
The girl turned again, incredulous. "... everywhere? That can't..." she turns her head slightly, brow furrowed. "... he did say 'different universe'..." She returned her focus to the hanging woman. "I suspect the... being... which has thrust us into your realm has trans-universal powers. Perhaps you will be rid of us eventually, but this being will still have access to your realm, and you will likely have to suffer additional intrusions. If you wish to avoid this outcome, you must help me. If I am interpreting 'everywhere' correctly, then-"
"You are not. You never will. You are not capable of understanding."
The girl waved a hand in frustration and turned back to the door. "I was asking permission out of a courtesy to you. I don't need help opening doors; I am plenty able on my own..."
The girl extended one hand towards the door, and a thousand invisible hammers suddenly barraged its edges.
"No! You cannot, you must be sto-"
A crack formed in the door, giving the young woman a small glimpse into the other side. The hammers stopped. The woman froze, eyes wide, mouth stretched in a rictus of pain.
"Now you suffer the consequences..." The hanging woman vanished, leaving the girl alone, unable to move or speak as her mind wrestled with impossibility after impossibility.
Yet, in the chaos brought about by her small glimpse into the infinite, she began to sense something familiar. In the slice of existence which had been illuminated for her, she saw... a cave. An explosion. A giant. A park. A small pocket universe which seemed to flow away even as she tried to concentrate on it. But there was a person in this pocket dimension which was familiar to her.
Her mouth finally moved, whispering softly, "Brother..."
Deep inside her, a quantumly-entangled communication device activated, paired with one inside the man in the bubble-universe. A link was established across the void of the multiverse, and she was brought into his mind. She saw him competing in a similar battle, organized by another (less enigmatic) being calling herself "The Cultivator". She trawled the records his complex and ancient internal machinery had recorded of the battle. With growing disappointment in her long-lost Brother, she watched him fail again and again, going so far as to lose his sanity twice to a protoplasmic blob. His opponents were barely worth consideration, so why were they beating him so soundly?
She crafted a way to finally contact him, infiltrating his current fugue-state to have a much-needed conversation with her only remaining family. She waited, as his addled consciousness worked its way towards the island of sanity she'd built inside his mind. It took the form of a room, windowless, portalless, perfectly circular. She stood in the center as he entered, and said, "Hello, Brother."
He looked confused; his mind was trapped almost one billion years in his past, still convinced he was an Emperor. She grinned at his expression of perplexity.
"You've aged, Brother. I checked the entanglement pair upon contact; yours has undergone almost one billion years' worth of additional revolutions than mine. While you've been in this... cowardly mental escape, I've had plenty of time to review your own logs. You're slipping, dear Brother."
Linked as they were, she could see his thoughts, feel the slivers of his mind wriggling free of their entrapment.
"You are old and pathetic now, Brother. Shunned by the galaxy you helped create, ridiculed as an evolutionary throwback! Though your goals of immortalizing our species were realized, without my help, you could naught but spend your days wallowing in the past. And now that you have a true challenge presented to you, now that you have a new purpose, what do you do? Lose yourself in memories! Pathetic! Useless! Here you are faced with an opportunity beyond your imagining! You could break the Cultivator's miserable little worlds with little to no effort, but what do you do instead? You talk and you socialize. These inbred, filthy characatures of humanity, and worthless aliens are beneath your attention! The Cultivator is your true target! Her power is YOURS to take, yet you make no effort towards it! Where is the man that ruled humanity for fifty thousand years? Where is the man that shaped the future of his entire species? What has become of my BROTHER!"
The anger she felt nearly burst through on the final word, her disappointment roiling beneath the surface.
She watched his mental image fall to its knees, as the eons of his steady decline were thrust upon him without warning, and the memory of his failures in his battle reminding him how he'd lost his edge.
"Yes, Brother, now you realize. You were always lost without me. Together, we were strongest."
For it was true. The two of them complimented each other; while he would always be in the spotlight, aggressive and charismatic, she worked in the shadows, in the places no one ever thought to look.
"That is why I have contacted you now, Brother. For me it has been less than an hour since my disappearance. As has been hinted, yours is not the only multi-universal battle. You see, I am in one too..."
Her brother looked up at those words. And he was now, truly, her brother. His mind had returned, and with it, his confidence, as he and his sister finally realized their new course of action.
"First, dear Sister, I must sort things out on the physical plane. Keep this line open. Deliver your report to me when I return."
"As you wish, Brother."
As he receded back into sanity, and back into his own battle, she was left alone once more in front of the cracked door. Assured that her message had gotten through, she turned, her eyes avoiding the crack, memories of that glimpse already fading as her mind deleted what it could not handle.
But now she had a way to contact her Brother. And, this battle had someone whom could benefit from that contact.
She left the clearing, once more becoming a blur, in search of the medieval tyrant Vandrel Rheinhardt.
Phil and the girl continued wandering through the Forest of Hands in silence, the former ever-alert for whatever else might be waiting for them in the softly swaying limbs.
With Phil's attention devoted to purely external threats, he never noticed Julia's darting eyes become more deliberate in their focus.
To their right, the twitching hands were suddenly disturbed, as though something had moved through them. Phil swung his rifle towards the disturbance, and Julia gasped accordingly. He motioned for her to let go; she would only slow him down, if another fight broke out. She obeyed. Then she screamed.
Out of the forest behind her, hands shot out, wrapping themselves around her legs. They pulled, knocking her to the ground. Phil swung around just in time to see Julia, fear plastered across her face, one hand reaching out to him as she was pulled into the forest. She had just enough time to yell, "Phil!" before disappearing. Silence fell, her screams cut short, the Forest of Hands betraying nothing of what had just happened.
Phil could do nothing but stand there, impotent.
---
Further in the forest, a young girl pulled herself up from the ground, a pile of dead and useless hand-trees nearby. She was a good distance away from the path where she'd left Phil. As she stood, her attention seemed to be fixated on a point hidden by the hand-trees before her. She hesitated for a moment, and then she moved. It was a movement more sensed than seen; the woman transformed into a blur which weaved seamlessly through the forest, disturbing nothing, completely silent.
The blur stopped as it entered a clearing, and the girl surveyed her surroundings. Before her, an enormous door stood, closed. Its surface seemed to shift constantly, and whatever material it was made of seemed to absorb any sound in the area. She could feel the aura of silence becoming deeper and more... substantial, as she approached.
A figure sat at its base. She could not make out any of its features, as its face was a worn porcelain mask, pitted and cracked, whatever expression it once carried lost to time. She moved up to the door, and placed a single finger on its shifting surface.
"No."
She whirled, startled at the voice. An upside-down woman, hanging from seemingly nothing at all, greeted her.
"You and the others, you do not belong here. That door is not for you. We are waiting... we have waited so long, but the multiverse is... emptying. They do not come. We are few now. You, and your companions, you are not what we require. You must leave."
"We are unable." The girl's voice was different. Harsher, more confident. She now held herself differently as well. There was more strength in her posture, a body tightly coiled and prepared to fight or run, if necessary. She continued, "We have been brought here against our will by a power we do not understand. I have been searching for an escape. This door," she gestured, "appeared on my sensors; there does not appear to be anything my instruments know how to measure beyond it. It is the most promising escape method I've yet discovered." She turned her back on the woman, focusing on the door once more. "I do not know who you are. Quite honestly, I don't expect that will matter much in the long run. All I ask is you tell me where this door leads."
"Everywhere."
The girl turned again, incredulous. "... everywhere? That can't..." she turns her head slightly, brow furrowed. "... he did say 'different universe'..." She returned her focus to the hanging woman. "I suspect the... being... which has thrust us into your realm has trans-universal powers. Perhaps you will be rid of us eventually, but this being will still have access to your realm, and you will likely have to suffer additional intrusions. If you wish to avoid this outcome, you must help me. If I am interpreting 'everywhere' correctly, then-"
"You are not. You never will. You are not capable of understanding."
The girl waved a hand in frustration and turned back to the door. "I was asking permission out of a courtesy to you. I don't need help opening doors; I am plenty able on my own..."
The girl extended one hand towards the door, and a thousand invisible hammers suddenly barraged its edges.
"No! You cannot, you must be sto-"
A crack formed in the door, giving the young woman a small glimpse into the other side. The hammers stopped. The woman froze, eyes wide, mouth stretched in a rictus of pain.
"Now you suffer the consequences..." The hanging woman vanished, leaving the girl alone, unable to move or speak as her mind wrestled with impossibility after impossibility.
Yet, in the chaos brought about by her small glimpse into the infinite, she began to sense something familiar. In the slice of existence which had been illuminated for her, she saw... a cave. An explosion. A giant. A park. A small pocket universe which seemed to flow away even as she tried to concentrate on it. But there was a person in this pocket dimension which was familiar to her.
Her mouth finally moved, whispering softly, "Brother..."
Deep inside her, a quantumly-entangled communication device activated, paired with one inside the man in the bubble-universe. A link was established across the void of the multiverse, and she was brought into his mind. She saw him competing in a similar battle, organized by another (less enigmatic) being calling herself "The Cultivator". She trawled the records his complex and ancient internal machinery had recorded of the battle. With growing disappointment in her long-lost Brother, she watched him fail again and again, going so far as to lose his sanity twice to a protoplasmic blob. His opponents were barely worth consideration, so why were they beating him so soundly?
She crafted a way to finally contact him, infiltrating his current fugue-state to have a much-needed conversation with her only remaining family. She waited, as his addled consciousness worked its way towards the island of sanity she'd built inside his mind. It took the form of a room, windowless, portalless, perfectly circular. She stood in the center as he entered, and said, "Hello, Brother."
He looked confused; his mind was trapped almost one billion years in his past, still convinced he was an Emperor. She grinned at his expression of perplexity.
"You've aged, Brother. I checked the entanglement pair upon contact; yours has undergone almost one billion years' worth of additional revolutions than mine. While you've been in this... cowardly mental escape, I've had plenty of time to review your own logs. You're slipping, dear Brother."
Linked as they were, she could see his thoughts, feel the slivers of his mind wriggling free of their entrapment.
"You are old and pathetic now, Brother. Shunned by the galaxy you helped create, ridiculed as an evolutionary throwback! Though your goals of immortalizing our species were realized, without my help, you could naught but spend your days wallowing in the past. And now that you have a true challenge presented to you, now that you have a new purpose, what do you do? Lose yourself in memories! Pathetic! Useless! Here you are faced with an opportunity beyond your imagining! You could break the Cultivator's miserable little worlds with little to no effort, but what do you do instead? You talk and you socialize. These inbred, filthy characatures of humanity, and worthless aliens are beneath your attention! The Cultivator is your true target! Her power is YOURS to take, yet you make no effort towards it! Where is the man that ruled humanity for fifty thousand years? Where is the man that shaped the future of his entire species? What has become of my BROTHER!"
The anger she felt nearly burst through on the final word, her disappointment roiling beneath the surface.
She watched his mental image fall to its knees, as the eons of his steady decline were thrust upon him without warning, and the memory of his failures in his battle reminding him how he'd lost his edge.
"Yes, Brother, now you realize. You were always lost without me. Together, we were strongest."
For it was true. The two of them complimented each other; while he would always be in the spotlight, aggressive and charismatic, she worked in the shadows, in the places no one ever thought to look.
"That is why I have contacted you now, Brother. For me it has been less than an hour since my disappearance. As has been hinted, yours is not the only multi-universal battle. You see, I am in one too..."
Her brother looked up at those words. And he was now, truly, her brother. His mind had returned, and with it, his confidence, as he and his sister finally realized their new course of action.
"First, dear Sister, I must sort things out on the physical plane. Keep this line open. Deliver your report to me when I return."
"As you wish, Brother."
As he receded back into sanity, and back into his own battle, she was left alone once more in front of the cracked door. Assured that her message had gotten through, she turned, her eyes avoiding the crack, memories of that glimpse already fading as her mind deleted what it could not handle.
But now she had a way to contact her Brother. And, this battle had someone whom could benefit from that contact.
She left the clearing, once more becoming a blur, in search of the medieval tyrant Vandrel Rheinhardt.