Re: The Wretched Rite - Round One - The Rose Ring
07-12-2011, 02:09 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Jacquerel.
Alluvion blinked his eyes slowly, one at a time, as he attempted to adjust himself to his surroundings. Few people react well to being pulled across space and time and deposited somewhere else and least of all when it happens twice in quick succession but Alluvion was perhaps one more vulnerable than most. His entire previous and exceptionally long years of life had been spent bound to a single river in a single valley, so while he knew other places existed in theory he had never seen any outside of one hundred kilometre stretch of water.
Let's just say it was a little disorienting at first.
It also didn't help that he barely understood what he was doing here in the first place. Barabbas had done his best to explain but most of the words had sailed right over the elemental's head. He'd been too busy staring at the terrible form of the Unborn, somewhere over their host's shoulder.
He knew nothing of Grandmasters or Battles, but he thought he could recognise something of himself in the great boiling cloud of potential. If he was a god (if only a small one), surely this creature was a god of gods. He was so spellbound by his presence that it was a long time before he realised that anyone was there with him at all, and it took another not insignificant stretch of time before he realised that the movements of Barrabas' lips was meant to be some form of communication. Fish didn't tend to talk much, while their brains were just about big enough to form the desires and wishes necessary to facilitate Alluvion's existence they didn't have any form of language and their link was strictly one-way.
Fortunately, being beings that feed on psychic emanations, spirits such as he are adept at picking up meaning if not the actual words, and those followed quickly enough. Unfortunately it was still slow enough for him to miss most of the conversation. By the time he had begun to pay attention there were only a few introductions left before he was dragged through the universe a second time to yet another new location, this one at least a little more familiar.
That said, he probably wouldn't have liked what he had heard had he been paying attention. A river can be a nasty place sometimes if you're a fish and there's a bigger fish looking for you but the creatures calling for help are rarely the hunters, and as a being shaped by the wordless demands of his believers Alluvion tended to side with the prey. Granted, he'd occasionally find himself helping a starving pike keep itself alive but fish just don't have the mental capacity to fight or kill for fun and it was not something Alluvion would enjoy doing himself even with his own existence at stake, let alone something he had much practice at.
Happily, the time it had taken him to figure out that someone was even talking to him allowed him to quickly bypass all of this potential angst simply by not hearing any of it and instead allowed him to investigate his new surroundings with childlike enthusiasm, once he'd gotten his bearings at least.
He started out by trying to emulate the method of speech he had just seen employed. The underside of his head split into a cavernous maw filled with liquid and therefore entirely useless teeth. It took him a few tries to realise that air flow was required, but he seemed to be getting the hang of it when he was suddenly distracted by examining the floor.
"Ssssss. SsSSSSsss. SSSSStone? Stone.
Stone."
He tried the word a couple of times, working the hiss out of his voice. There certainly was a lot of stone around, or at least a lot more than he was used to and in more colours than he had believed rock could hold. It covered the floor in unnatural, rectangular blocks. It rose up to either side of him in strange, flat, vertical cliffs that couldn't possibly have been caused by erosion (he was an expert on this). It formed weird, angular caves off in the near distance. These were what he found most interesting, caves suggested water and while he thought this new place was quite exciting he would be more comfortable if he knew where the water was. Clearly there had to be some somewhere.
As he came out of the alleyway though (for that was what it was, not some form of a valley as he believed it to be) he was further distracted from his adventure by the sight of green.
"Tree."
Not even the trace of a hiss on that one. The plants were spaced out randomly along a wide, flat bed of rock, poking through the stone at wide intervals. He ran a webbed hand across one thoughtfully. A couple of branches had been broken off from the sides, but weren't present on the ground beneath. Had something been eating it? The wide spacing of the plants also seemed very strange to him, how did they spread across such a long distance? How did the seeds penetrate the rock in the first place? And why were they the only plants around?
Narrowing his eyes, he exerted his empathy into the bark. The plant was content enough for a tree, it had sun, water and no competition, and yet it also seemed inexplicably wrong. Something had regularly been cutting bits from it, the ground to the left and right did not allow it to expand its root network much further and it could not hear the voices of any of its children, which surely must have begun to grow by now? It was quite a mystery, and the tree seemed to be about to explain the answer when Alluvion was suddenly alerted to movement in the distance.
The tenuous link to the plant abruptly broke, he'd never been that good at talking to trees as they didn't often grow by the riverside, and he snapped his head around to see what was going on.
Something darted past a large hole in the exterior of one of the biggest caves. He wasn't sure exactly what it was but it hadn't been a tree. He liked animals a lot more than trees, they were a lot better to talk to and maybe if he met one he could learn something interesting. He decided immediately that this was the place to investigate.
Words hung in front of the cave's mouth, above a collection of sharpened stone poles. Or at least, some kind of mineral. Alluvion wasn't really well educated on the specifics of metals but it was certainly shinier than your average rock and looked maybe a little harder.
"Beth...leham?"
This word did not mean anything to Alluvion, but it tasted bad in his mouth. He decided he'd leave that word alone for now.
He walked through the iron gates as if they weren't there, his liquid form passing easily through the large gaps and made his way to the entrance of the sanatorium. If he couldn't find whatever it was that had been moving inside, this largest of caves must surely contain a great water source.
This would be far more exciting than any trees.
Alluvion blinked his eyes slowly, one at a time, as he attempted to adjust himself to his surroundings. Few people react well to being pulled across space and time and deposited somewhere else and least of all when it happens twice in quick succession but Alluvion was perhaps one more vulnerable than most. His entire previous and exceptionally long years of life had been spent bound to a single river in a single valley, so while he knew other places existed in theory he had never seen any outside of one hundred kilometre stretch of water.
Let's just say it was a little disorienting at first.
It also didn't help that he barely understood what he was doing here in the first place. Barabbas had done his best to explain but most of the words had sailed right over the elemental's head. He'd been too busy staring at the terrible form of the Unborn, somewhere over their host's shoulder.
He knew nothing of Grandmasters or Battles, but he thought he could recognise something of himself in the great boiling cloud of potential. If he was a god (if only a small one), surely this creature was a god of gods. He was so spellbound by his presence that it was a long time before he realised that anyone was there with him at all, and it took another not insignificant stretch of time before he realised that the movements of Barrabas' lips was meant to be some form of communication. Fish didn't tend to talk much, while their brains were just about big enough to form the desires and wishes necessary to facilitate Alluvion's existence they didn't have any form of language and their link was strictly one-way.
Fortunately, being beings that feed on psychic emanations, spirits such as he are adept at picking up meaning if not the actual words, and those followed quickly enough. Unfortunately it was still slow enough for him to miss most of the conversation. By the time he had begun to pay attention there were only a few introductions left before he was dragged through the universe a second time to yet another new location, this one at least a little more familiar.
That said, he probably wouldn't have liked what he had heard had he been paying attention. A river can be a nasty place sometimes if you're a fish and there's a bigger fish looking for you but the creatures calling for help are rarely the hunters, and as a being shaped by the wordless demands of his believers Alluvion tended to side with the prey. Granted, he'd occasionally find himself helping a starving pike keep itself alive but fish just don't have the mental capacity to fight or kill for fun and it was not something Alluvion would enjoy doing himself even with his own existence at stake, let alone something he had much practice at.
Happily, the time it had taken him to figure out that someone was even talking to him allowed him to quickly bypass all of this potential angst simply by not hearing any of it and instead allowed him to investigate his new surroundings with childlike enthusiasm, once he'd gotten his bearings at least.
He started out by trying to emulate the method of speech he had just seen employed. The underside of his head split into a cavernous maw filled with liquid and therefore entirely useless teeth. It took him a few tries to realise that air flow was required, but he seemed to be getting the hang of it when he was suddenly distracted by examining the floor.
"Ssssss. SsSSSSsss. SSSSStone? Stone.
Stone."
He tried the word a couple of times, working the hiss out of his voice. There certainly was a lot of stone around, or at least a lot more than he was used to and in more colours than he had believed rock could hold. It covered the floor in unnatural, rectangular blocks. It rose up to either side of him in strange, flat, vertical cliffs that couldn't possibly have been caused by erosion (he was an expert on this). It formed weird, angular caves off in the near distance. These were what he found most interesting, caves suggested water and while he thought this new place was quite exciting he would be more comfortable if he knew where the water was. Clearly there had to be some somewhere.
As he came out of the alleyway though (for that was what it was, not some form of a valley as he believed it to be) he was further distracted from his adventure by the sight of green.
"Tree."
Not even the trace of a hiss on that one. The plants were spaced out randomly along a wide, flat bed of rock, poking through the stone at wide intervals. He ran a webbed hand across one thoughtfully. A couple of branches had been broken off from the sides, but weren't present on the ground beneath. Had something been eating it? The wide spacing of the plants also seemed very strange to him, how did they spread across such a long distance? How did the seeds penetrate the rock in the first place? And why were they the only plants around?
Narrowing his eyes, he exerted his empathy into the bark. The plant was content enough for a tree, it had sun, water and no competition, and yet it also seemed inexplicably wrong. Something had regularly been cutting bits from it, the ground to the left and right did not allow it to expand its root network much further and it could not hear the voices of any of its children, which surely must have begun to grow by now? It was quite a mystery, and the tree seemed to be about to explain the answer when Alluvion was suddenly alerted to movement in the distance.
The tenuous link to the plant abruptly broke, he'd never been that good at talking to trees as they didn't often grow by the riverside, and he snapped his head around to see what was going on.
Something darted past a large hole in the exterior of one of the biggest caves. He wasn't sure exactly what it was but it hadn't been a tree. He liked animals a lot more than trees, they were a lot better to talk to and maybe if he met one he could learn something interesting. He decided immediately that this was the place to investigate.
Words hung in front of the cave's mouth, above a collection of sharpened stone poles. Or at least, some kind of mineral. Alluvion wasn't really well educated on the specifics of metals but it was certainly shinier than your average rock and looked maybe a little harder.
"Beth...leham?"
This word did not mean anything to Alluvion, but it tasted bad in his mouth. He decided he'd leave that word alone for now.
He walked through the iron gates as if they weren't there, his liquid form passing easily through the large gaps and made his way to the entrance of the sanatorium. If he couldn't find whatever it was that had been moving inside, this largest of caves must surely contain a great water source.
This would be far more exciting than any trees.