Re: The BATTLE of the CENTURY! [S!7] - Round 1: The New Frontier
07-31-2012, 10:59 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by XX.
There was a tremendous, agonized groan of ancient and decaying oak that tore through the air like a tortured howl, and then the Ragazza shimmered into existence in the shadow of the New Frontier.
The morning sky plunged down around it in a blanket of fog and smoke, a soft white sea peaked by bulbous thunderheads and the grey swells of distant mountain peaks. Storm-tossed waves frozen by some titanic hand rose up to swallow the dead ship’s pitted and warped hull, enveloping it in a soft and pinkish haze that veiled the girl clinging breathlessly to its bow. From below it came the faint glow of spectral portholes, tingeing the clouds with a golden aureole. For a few more moments the ship drifted among the strata, swirls of cirrus rising up in its wake. Its painted eyes stared sightlessly across the horizon as their paint flaked gently off into the void, one piece at a time.
If ghosts could be amused, this one wouldn’t be.
The clouds parted like seaweed as the Ragazza pitched upwards with a roar of displaced air, keel carving a long and ugly scar through the fog as it curved sharply towards the peak of the island’s roots. Sad canvas rags swelled with the foreign wind, billowing out behind the wreck in tiny grey puffs that trailed curls of dried sargassum and the discarded husks of dead barnacles. At its bow the ship’s figurehead smiled demurely at the behemoth landmass towering above her, her ruby eyes dark in its shadow. Against the bulk of the New Frontier the ship was little more than a tiny red fly darting through its underbelly, nosing at the blind eyes of caverns hanging open to the sky and sailing through the upside-down cliffs that teemed with the nests and yellowing bones of alien birds. It pushed through falling rivers heedless of the water pounding on its decks and swooped through the flocks of strange bat-like creatures that darted around its broken masts, letting the roots that dangled like cut wires from the island’s belly tangle in its tattered rigging.
It came to rest at the mouth of a cave jagged with crystal teeth, a mass of huge emerald spires jutting out hungrily from the raw earth above the vast and empty sky. Large as it was, the Ragazza could have navigated the cave if it were seven times its size, yet it paused before the hollow and yawed gently, letting the beams of its portholes sweep over the rocky surface. Crystals as tall as a dozen men caught the light and glittered in the distant darkness, their emerald aura bathing what could be seen of the murky cavern in an eerie, abyssal glow.
The ship’s ancient wood groaned with the effort as it drifted gently into the cave’s mouth, a red smear with twenty golden eyes beaming off the coruscating floor. Its deck was bare; it carried no passengers except for the crumbling skeletons of fish and a thick pad of papers stapled to the wood bearing on its cover a nearly unnoticeable sigil.
There was a tremendous, agonized groan of ancient and decaying oak that tore through the air like a tortured howl, and then the Ragazza shimmered into existence in the shadow of the New Frontier.
The morning sky plunged down around it in a blanket of fog and smoke, a soft white sea peaked by bulbous thunderheads and the grey swells of distant mountain peaks. Storm-tossed waves frozen by some titanic hand rose up to swallow the dead ship’s pitted and warped hull, enveloping it in a soft and pinkish haze that veiled the girl clinging breathlessly to its bow. From below it came the faint glow of spectral portholes, tingeing the clouds with a golden aureole. For a few more moments the ship drifted among the strata, swirls of cirrus rising up in its wake. Its painted eyes stared sightlessly across the horizon as their paint flaked gently off into the void, one piece at a time.
If ghosts could be amused, this one wouldn’t be.
The clouds parted like seaweed as the Ragazza pitched upwards with a roar of displaced air, keel carving a long and ugly scar through the fog as it curved sharply towards the peak of the island’s roots. Sad canvas rags swelled with the foreign wind, billowing out behind the wreck in tiny grey puffs that trailed curls of dried sargassum and the discarded husks of dead barnacles. At its bow the ship’s figurehead smiled demurely at the behemoth landmass towering above her, her ruby eyes dark in its shadow. Against the bulk of the New Frontier the ship was little more than a tiny red fly darting through its underbelly, nosing at the blind eyes of caverns hanging open to the sky and sailing through the upside-down cliffs that teemed with the nests and yellowing bones of alien birds. It pushed through falling rivers heedless of the water pounding on its decks and swooped through the flocks of strange bat-like creatures that darted around its broken masts, letting the roots that dangled like cut wires from the island’s belly tangle in its tattered rigging.
It came to rest at the mouth of a cave jagged with crystal teeth, a mass of huge emerald spires jutting out hungrily from the raw earth above the vast and empty sky. Large as it was, the Ragazza could have navigated the cave if it were seven times its size, yet it paused before the hollow and yawed gently, letting the beams of its portholes sweep over the rocky surface. Crystals as tall as a dozen men caught the light and glittered in the distant darkness, their emerald aura bathing what could be seen of the murky cavern in an eerie, abyssal glow.
The ship’s ancient wood groaned with the effort as it drifted gently into the cave’s mouth, a red smear with twenty golden eyes beaming off the coruscating floor. Its deck was bare; it carried no passengers except for the crumbling skeletons of fish and a thick pad of papers stapled to the wood bearing on its cover a nearly unnoticeable sigil.