Re: The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 1: Parallels/Perpendicularities]
02-09-2011, 12:22 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.
It had been dark and quiet, the air heavy with the choking fog rising off the marsh. There was little noise, but it could not truly be called silent; silence implies a sense of peace or rest, but the void of sound - punctuated only rarely by a raucous birdcall or sloshing noise - was nothing if not tense. The discomfort in the air was palpable, in a more literal sense than is typically meant by the phrase: any living being in a certain area of the swamp would have had a sense of dread and disquiet instilled in them, regardless of their actual mood.
The cause of the unsettling aura would not have been readily apparent to any observer outside a particular stand of trees; anyone who peered in, however, would have been able to make a fairly good guess that the source was the spell being woven by an apparently-ambulatory tree. Faintly-glowing sigils traced on the ground lent the scene a sickly green cast, bright enough to make out shapes and motion but too dim to truly illuminate the scene. Details, and even the contents of the small tree-lined area, were largely impossible to make out; one thing, however, was perfectly clear and visible, as a number of small glyphs had been carved into the trunk of one of the trees that formed the "wall"; though they were little brighter than their larger ground-bound equivalents, the number of them in one small area was enough to reveal what they were carved around: a man had been nailed to the tree, spikes driven through his shoulders and wrists, and a rope or vine was securing his ankles in place. His face was eerily impassive and expressionless as the enormous shape of his captor moved around the clearing, tracing more glowing arcane shapes into the dirt; he would have appeared dead were it not for his slow, calm breathing.
Eventually, the shaman finished his mysterious work and returned to the man; the stand was by now faintly illuminated by all the arcane symbols scattered around it, barely bright enough to show what was happening. A woody hand reached for the senseless prisoner, running a barbed fingertip down his bare chest; the skin was effortlessly flayed, and as the thorns reached the stomach more pressure was applied, sending the wood tearing through skin and muscle and effectively eviscerating the man. Through the entire process, his face stayed completely blank, eyes that showed only sclera never blinking; ordinarily, this shaman wouldn't have bothered with a mind-blank spell, and would probably have relished the man's screams as he bled out, but this was an extraordinarily delicate spell and any thrashing could be disastrous. As quickly as could be managed, the man's skin was further stripped from his flesh and splayed behind him in a manner reminiscent of wings; his intestines were drawn carefully out with sanded-down fingers and woven around the arms and legs without tearing or cutting them. A stone knife was produced, and ribs were carefully removed; life-energy was periodically infused into the rapidly-exsanguinating man whenever he threatened to die. Soon, the torso was completely open to the fetid air of the marsh, slowly expanding and contracting lungs and beating heart continuing their functions in a ghastly mockery of life. Enormous wooden fingers stretched towards the heart, and... vanished.
The glowing runes sputtered and went out as one, leaving nothing but mundane shapes in the soil and on the trees. The oppressive sensation of dread dissipated, giving way to nothing but a normal, if murky, night. And for a few moments, that was all; there was peace over the grisly scene and the sodden mud. Then, with a sudden gasp, the man awakened, his eyes rolling back down from his skull.
It was probably for the best that he didn't have long. Either way, peace returned to the marsh again before many minutes had passed.
---
Elsewhere – about as elsewhere as it's possible to be, in fact – a tree towered over several other variants on the theme of "sapient". A very angry tree. A very angry tree who had been interrupted, kidnapped, at the culmination of years of planning and work. A tree that, if it had its way, would currently be screaming bloody murder, and probably murdering bloodily. It found itself bizarrely paralyzed, however, able only to refocus the jagged hollows that served as its eyes and observe the other apparently-similarly-incapacitated beings. A bunch of pathetic monkeys, most of them. Worse, even, if such a thing were possible, were the insect in the tin can and the pathetic little quadruped. And some kind of... device. The wooden monkeys were bizarre, but not particularly distressing to someone who had no real love for his own kind and in fact had several structures made of his race's bodies concealed in his branches.
Time enough passed to percolate the blinding fury from his capture into seething choler, tempered with no small measure of panic. What had brought him here? For what purpose? Was he, the mightiest shaman of the dorukardia, to be some kind of collection piece for an eccentric wizard? Paranoid and angry thoughts spun through his mind, building to a mad crescendo just before the Counsellor entered. As she began her mad speech, all that rage hit a brick wall and transformed into disbelief and confusion. A fight to the death? It was utterly preposterous. Aside from the self-evident fact that there could be no winner but the tree, the notion that some gibbering madwoman of a therapist would go around kidnapping people and pitting them against each other in mortal combat to fix their problems was just... absurd.
And then she piled indignity on top of absurdity by climbing up the frozen tree as though it was some sort of mundane backyard oak. He would have been quivering with apoplectic fury by now if he could, but saved a small amount of mental space to wonder how someone so apparently fleshy and unprotected could scale his spinose bark without injury. She continued her speech from his boughs, briefly introducing each of the inferior beings she expected him to slaughter, making sure to explain what mental problems each had. He snorted inwardly when she mentioned his "disorders"; if that was what she wanted to call pragmatism and awareness of his own superiority, so be it.
He was so occupied with his self-serving thoughts when she clapped her hands and spit a few more inconsequential sentences. At "Have fun!", there was a flash, and they were all gone.
---
Crepitans's stomata slammed shut as the bitter cold of the arctic air pressed against him. He was a tropical plant, or at least had been before being instilled with true life – the marsh had been a bit cooler than he would have ideally preferred, but tolerable; this was utterly unacceptable. It had been decades since he'd seen snow, and that had been as a demonstration of weather-spells, not natural snow, and not the blinding, omnipresent whiteness he was surrounded with now. The ice beneath his feet creaked, the pressure of several tons of tree turning the surface into slick water and threatening to break through the entire sheet. His shrike squawked with displeasure and retreated as deep as it could into the treant's crown.
Fear and confusion were draining out of Crepitans, leaving room for his boundless wrath; the only real question was who to direct it at: should he work towards destroying the impetuous witch who had the audacity to treat him like the rest of these pieces of filth, or deign to play her game and squash what could charitably be called his opponents? After some reasoning and a bit of aimless wandering, Bloodbark came to the conclusion that he had no idea where he was or where to find the Counsellor, and that shamanism was not the school of magic to get into if one wanted significant teleportation ability. If he wanted to destroy her, he would have to destroy the rest of them first; she was unlikely to have made herself present in the match itself, so he would have to get her to reveal herself by winning. It wouldn't take long.
Conveniently, there presently came several flashes and quite a lot of noise. A large snowbank stood between Crepitans and the source of those sounds, but he simply pressed straight through it, his crown above even the highest mound, cutting through the whiteness like a very green shark's fin. Once he was on the other side, he scanned for his targets, and spotted them converging near another pile of snow. What had she said? Something about only four (or seven) of them being in one place? That meant, presumably, that all of them that could be were gathered here, making it easy for him to kill them all at a go. Extremely serendipitous. Two of them were scuffling already, and the third was approaching from some distance; he judged the third would reach the other two well before he would, about which he was pleased. He moved, surprisingly quickly for something his size – the twenty-foot stride certainly contributing to his significant speed – waiting for what he took to be the insect in the bipedal metal container to reach the others; when it did, he broke into a run, thunderous footsteps sending cracks along the ice, and reached into his branches.
---
"Who are you?"
Before a response could be made, or even the question considered, the sound of pounding footsteps came rolling across the snow. Two pairs of eyes looked towards the source, and saw the tree barreling towards them. After a moment, they also noticed several small shapes flying through the air in their direction.
Several of the seedpods exploded in midair, reports like gunfire sounding over the rumble of the treefolk's approach: they sent their organic shrapnel scything in the trio's general direction for the most part; those pods that had not burst rolled a bit closer before doing so, launching another volley of sharp seeds. The air hissed with their approach.
It had been dark and quiet, the air heavy with the choking fog rising off the marsh. There was little noise, but it could not truly be called silent; silence implies a sense of peace or rest, but the void of sound - punctuated only rarely by a raucous birdcall or sloshing noise - was nothing if not tense. The discomfort in the air was palpable, in a more literal sense than is typically meant by the phrase: any living being in a certain area of the swamp would have had a sense of dread and disquiet instilled in them, regardless of their actual mood.
The cause of the unsettling aura would not have been readily apparent to any observer outside a particular stand of trees; anyone who peered in, however, would have been able to make a fairly good guess that the source was the spell being woven by an apparently-ambulatory tree. Faintly-glowing sigils traced on the ground lent the scene a sickly green cast, bright enough to make out shapes and motion but too dim to truly illuminate the scene. Details, and even the contents of the small tree-lined area, were largely impossible to make out; one thing, however, was perfectly clear and visible, as a number of small glyphs had been carved into the trunk of one of the trees that formed the "wall"; though they were little brighter than their larger ground-bound equivalents, the number of them in one small area was enough to reveal what they were carved around: a man had been nailed to the tree, spikes driven through his shoulders and wrists, and a rope or vine was securing his ankles in place. His face was eerily impassive and expressionless as the enormous shape of his captor moved around the clearing, tracing more glowing arcane shapes into the dirt; he would have appeared dead were it not for his slow, calm breathing.
Eventually, the shaman finished his mysterious work and returned to the man; the stand was by now faintly illuminated by all the arcane symbols scattered around it, barely bright enough to show what was happening. A woody hand reached for the senseless prisoner, running a barbed fingertip down his bare chest; the skin was effortlessly flayed, and as the thorns reached the stomach more pressure was applied, sending the wood tearing through skin and muscle and effectively eviscerating the man. Through the entire process, his face stayed completely blank, eyes that showed only sclera never blinking; ordinarily, this shaman wouldn't have bothered with a mind-blank spell, and would probably have relished the man's screams as he bled out, but this was an extraordinarily delicate spell and any thrashing could be disastrous. As quickly as could be managed, the man's skin was further stripped from his flesh and splayed behind him in a manner reminiscent of wings; his intestines were drawn carefully out with sanded-down fingers and woven around the arms and legs without tearing or cutting them. A stone knife was produced, and ribs were carefully removed; life-energy was periodically infused into the rapidly-exsanguinating man whenever he threatened to die. Soon, the torso was completely open to the fetid air of the marsh, slowly expanding and contracting lungs and beating heart continuing their functions in a ghastly mockery of life. Enormous wooden fingers stretched towards the heart, and... vanished.
The glowing runes sputtered and went out as one, leaving nothing but mundane shapes in the soil and on the trees. The oppressive sensation of dread dissipated, giving way to nothing but a normal, if murky, night. And for a few moments, that was all; there was peace over the grisly scene and the sodden mud. Then, with a sudden gasp, the man awakened, his eyes rolling back down from his skull.
It was probably for the best that he didn't have long. Either way, peace returned to the marsh again before many minutes had passed.
---
Elsewhere – about as elsewhere as it's possible to be, in fact – a tree towered over several other variants on the theme of "sapient". A very angry tree. A very angry tree who had been interrupted, kidnapped, at the culmination of years of planning and work. A tree that, if it had its way, would currently be screaming bloody murder, and probably murdering bloodily. It found itself bizarrely paralyzed, however, able only to refocus the jagged hollows that served as its eyes and observe the other apparently-similarly-incapacitated beings. A bunch of pathetic monkeys, most of them. Worse, even, if such a thing were possible, were the insect in the tin can and the pathetic little quadruped. And some kind of... device. The wooden monkeys were bizarre, but not particularly distressing to someone who had no real love for his own kind and in fact had several structures made of his race's bodies concealed in his branches.
Time enough passed to percolate the blinding fury from his capture into seething choler, tempered with no small measure of panic. What had brought him here? For what purpose? Was he, the mightiest shaman of the dorukardia, to be some kind of collection piece for an eccentric wizard? Paranoid and angry thoughts spun through his mind, building to a mad crescendo just before the Counsellor entered. As she began her mad speech, all that rage hit a brick wall and transformed into disbelief and confusion. A fight to the death? It was utterly preposterous. Aside from the self-evident fact that there could be no winner but the tree, the notion that some gibbering madwoman of a therapist would go around kidnapping people and pitting them against each other in mortal combat to fix their problems was just... absurd.
And then she piled indignity on top of absurdity by climbing up the frozen tree as though it was some sort of mundane backyard oak. He would have been quivering with apoplectic fury by now if he could, but saved a small amount of mental space to wonder how someone so apparently fleshy and unprotected could scale his spinose bark without injury. She continued her speech from his boughs, briefly introducing each of the inferior beings she expected him to slaughter, making sure to explain what mental problems each had. He snorted inwardly when she mentioned his "disorders"; if that was what she wanted to call pragmatism and awareness of his own superiority, so be it.
He was so occupied with his self-serving thoughts when she clapped her hands and spit a few more inconsequential sentences. At "Have fun!", there was a flash, and they were all gone.
---
Crepitans's stomata slammed shut as the bitter cold of the arctic air pressed against him. He was a tropical plant, or at least had been before being instilled with true life – the marsh had been a bit cooler than he would have ideally preferred, but tolerable; this was utterly unacceptable. It had been decades since he'd seen snow, and that had been as a demonstration of weather-spells, not natural snow, and not the blinding, omnipresent whiteness he was surrounded with now. The ice beneath his feet creaked, the pressure of several tons of tree turning the surface into slick water and threatening to break through the entire sheet. His shrike squawked with displeasure and retreated as deep as it could into the treant's crown.
Fear and confusion were draining out of Crepitans, leaving room for his boundless wrath; the only real question was who to direct it at: should he work towards destroying the impetuous witch who had the audacity to treat him like the rest of these pieces of filth, or deign to play her game and squash what could charitably be called his opponents? After some reasoning and a bit of aimless wandering, Bloodbark came to the conclusion that he had no idea where he was or where to find the Counsellor, and that shamanism was not the school of magic to get into if one wanted significant teleportation ability. If he wanted to destroy her, he would have to destroy the rest of them first; she was unlikely to have made herself present in the match itself, so he would have to get her to reveal herself by winning. It wouldn't take long.
Conveniently, there presently came several flashes and quite a lot of noise. A large snowbank stood between Crepitans and the source of those sounds, but he simply pressed straight through it, his crown above even the highest mound, cutting through the whiteness like a very green shark's fin. Once he was on the other side, he scanned for his targets, and spotted them converging near another pile of snow. What had she said? Something about only four (or seven) of them being in one place? That meant, presumably, that all of them that could be were gathered here, making it easy for him to kill them all at a go. Extremely serendipitous. Two of them were scuffling already, and the third was approaching from some distance; he judged the third would reach the other two well before he would, about which he was pleased. He moved, surprisingly quickly for something his size – the twenty-foot stride certainly contributing to his significant speed – waiting for what he took to be the insect in the bipedal metal container to reach the others; when it did, he broke into a run, thunderous footsteps sending cracks along the ice, and reached into his branches.
---
"Who are you?"
Before a response could be made, or even the question considered, the sound of pounding footsteps came rolling across the snow. Two pairs of eyes looked towards the source, and saw the tree barreling towards them. After a moment, they also noticed several small shapes flying through the air in their direction.
Several of the seedpods exploded in midair, reports like gunfire sounding over the rumble of the treefolk's approach: they sent their organic shrapnel scything in the trio's general direction for the most part; those pods that had not burst rolled a bit closer before doing so, launching another volley of sharp seeds. The air hissed with their approach.