Re: The Wretched Rite - Round Two - Inferno Alpha
10-20-2012, 04:28 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Jacquerel.
It really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that a River God would feel a deep spiritual connection with the ocean, pretty much any school child could tell you that all rivers eventually flow to the sea (even if technically they don't). All the water that passes through a river is heading to the ocean, but as it stops being part of the river before it gets there this is a journey that the river itself never actually gets to complete.
The imagery was not lost on Alluvion as he found himself dwarfed by the shadow of an enormous frozen wave. He couldn't help but think that The Unborn was trying to tell him something, though quite what that could be he wasn't certain. He hadn't been one for Signs and Portents himself but you don't get to be a god without at least understanding the basics.
Any allusion to an unfinished journey he could grasp, his progress on the “quest” set for the battlers by Barrabas had been... lacking. He'd done his best in the last round but had spent most of it wandering alone through corridors searching for people, then once he had finally found everyone two people died. Apparently this had been enough to keep the foetal god's keeper happy but it did not satisfy Alluvion at all and he had thus decided he was going to try going it alone wherever he was deposited next instead of wasting so much time searching for the others, though frankly he still wasn't exactly certain about what it was he was supposed to be doing.
No, the part that had Alluvion confused and also a little worried was the stillness of the great arcs of water stretching over his head. Water is not properly alive on it own and if you remove its one animating quality (flow) you might as well call it dead, it even begins to stagnate as a corpse would. Alluvion had a deep-seated aversion to still water and as such found the towering and immutably stationary waves at least as unsettling as they were awe-inspiring, if not more so.
Tentatively he reached out with his gift of waterspeaking... only to be interrupted as Barrabas froze him too, probably for the best. He did not know what kind of message a dead ocean could be trying to convey but it was probably not a good one. Mental communion with a deity as yet unfinished probably would not have ended well for the smaller party, either.
Lost in musing, Alluvion almost physically jumped as he suddenly found himself in a well-lit laboratory walled with rows of water tanks. He hadn't really been listening to Barabbas at all and thus had no idea where he was (not, he thought, that this was likely to matter very much in the grand scheme of things). No particular conclusion had been reached about The Unborn might have been trying to say but here was at least an opportunity to take action, this standing water was something he could actually do something about!
It was only after he'd rammed a fist through the glass side of the first tank that he noticed the cuttlefish inside plaintively waving its arms at him, its brothers watching from the containers at either side. Whoops.
~ ~ ~
It had not thus far been a good day for Junior Researcher Lauren Elizabeth Cohen, coming at the end of a bad week, halfway through an awful month. Her tiny department was understaffed at the best of times but with Lucille recalled to some other “top secret” project and Doctor Kohler entering his second week in the infirmary with little sign of improvement (why didn't they ship him to the surface already? Their work wasn't that classified was it?) she was left as the least qualified member of her team trying to do the work of three people, when her position was only supposed to have been temporary in the first place.
Those Above were convinced that The Enemy were relaying messages through fauna but while they had shipped some suspiciously displaced cuttlefish that they had fished up to various facilities, all that Lauren's team had been able to discover was that they had clearly been operating outside of their natual range and depth (so there was at least something decidedly fishy going on there) and also, in a fit of carelessness, found out that they were incredibly toxic.
She hadn't made any progress at all since Kohler got himself hospitalised and the board was starting to get antsy and she'd made similar headway in trying to help the doctors cook up some kind of antidote. She was stressed by the workload, worried about her colleague, angry that he could have been so stupid and guilty that she was pinning the blame for her own problems on a sick man. With nobody else to take her position there was no chance of getting any surface leave, and stuck in an underwater facility there was no way to escape any of her problems. You weren't allowed down here if you got claustrophobic but for the first time the facilities cramped confines were starting to get to her.
And then of course on top of that one of the new guys rotated to guard duty in this area wouldn't stop following her around and trying out pickup lines. She didn't even know why they needed guards, even in a tense situation like this surely nobody could sneak up on them under the ocean?
She was actually surprised she hadn't been ambushed yet, he was usually waiting around when she went to get herself a coffee around this time but there'd been no sign today and... oh God, had she left the laboratory door unlocked? She could see movement through the frosted glass, damn it.
He'd cornered her in there once before and while he wasn't authorised it wasn't like she could get security to boot him out, he was security. She was pretty sure he'd been holding mirrors up to the tanks to make the fish angry too, they might be captured enemy agents but they were her enemy agents damn it!
Steeling herself for an unpleasant confrontation, she slammed the door open and strode inside.
“Harvey that had better not be you in there! I've told you before that you aren't allowed in here and if you've been bothering my fish again so help me I... I...” her coffee dropped to the floor.
One of her cuttlefish stared back at her from eye level, swimming perfectly happily inside the head of a... big, watery snake? The thing cocked its head to the side to stare at her with one large yellow eye and opened a mouth that was far too wide, speaking perfectly fluent English.
”Is Harvey the blonde-haired walker with the mirror? You should not let him do that you know, they think that they are looking at a competitor.
Additionally there is not enough space in here, you should help me put these back where you found them.”
She shut the door again.
Had she been questioning the necessity of guards? Never mind that, they were a wonderful idea. They could come down here and either deal with it or drag her away to a nice padded cell.
Holding the door handle closed with one hand (though the creature hadn't actually attempted to leave yet) she stretched over to shout into the (alas, malfunctioning) intercom a couple of feet along the wall.
“Harvey! Harvey!!
Do your job god damnit, get your ass over here right now!
We're being invaded!”
It really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that a River God would feel a deep spiritual connection with the ocean, pretty much any school child could tell you that all rivers eventually flow to the sea (even if technically they don't). All the water that passes through a river is heading to the ocean, but as it stops being part of the river before it gets there this is a journey that the river itself never actually gets to complete.
The imagery was not lost on Alluvion as he found himself dwarfed by the shadow of an enormous frozen wave. He couldn't help but think that The Unborn was trying to tell him something, though quite what that could be he wasn't certain. He hadn't been one for Signs and Portents himself but you don't get to be a god without at least understanding the basics.
Any allusion to an unfinished journey he could grasp, his progress on the “quest” set for the battlers by Barrabas had been... lacking. He'd done his best in the last round but had spent most of it wandering alone through corridors searching for people, then once he had finally found everyone two people died. Apparently this had been enough to keep the foetal god's keeper happy but it did not satisfy Alluvion at all and he had thus decided he was going to try going it alone wherever he was deposited next instead of wasting so much time searching for the others, though frankly he still wasn't exactly certain about what it was he was supposed to be doing.
No, the part that had Alluvion confused and also a little worried was the stillness of the great arcs of water stretching over his head. Water is not properly alive on it own and if you remove its one animating quality (flow) you might as well call it dead, it even begins to stagnate as a corpse would. Alluvion had a deep-seated aversion to still water and as such found the towering and immutably stationary waves at least as unsettling as they were awe-inspiring, if not more so.
Tentatively he reached out with his gift of waterspeaking... only to be interrupted as Barrabas froze him too, probably for the best. He did not know what kind of message a dead ocean could be trying to convey but it was probably not a good one. Mental communion with a deity as yet unfinished probably would not have ended well for the smaller party, either.
Lost in musing, Alluvion almost physically jumped as he suddenly found himself in a well-lit laboratory walled with rows of water tanks. He hadn't really been listening to Barabbas at all and thus had no idea where he was (not, he thought, that this was likely to matter very much in the grand scheme of things). No particular conclusion had been reached about The Unborn might have been trying to say but here was at least an opportunity to take action, this standing water was something he could actually do something about!
It was only after he'd rammed a fist through the glass side of the first tank that he noticed the cuttlefish inside plaintively waving its arms at him, its brothers watching from the containers at either side. Whoops.
~ ~ ~
It had not thus far been a good day for Junior Researcher Lauren Elizabeth Cohen, coming at the end of a bad week, halfway through an awful month. Her tiny department was understaffed at the best of times but with Lucille recalled to some other “top secret” project and Doctor Kohler entering his second week in the infirmary with little sign of improvement (why didn't they ship him to the surface already? Their work wasn't that classified was it?) she was left as the least qualified member of her team trying to do the work of three people, when her position was only supposed to have been temporary in the first place.
Those Above were convinced that The Enemy were relaying messages through fauna but while they had shipped some suspiciously displaced cuttlefish that they had fished up to various facilities, all that Lauren's team had been able to discover was that they had clearly been operating outside of their natual range and depth (so there was at least something decidedly fishy going on there) and also, in a fit of carelessness, found out that they were incredibly toxic.
She hadn't made any progress at all since Kohler got himself hospitalised and the board was starting to get antsy and she'd made similar headway in trying to help the doctors cook up some kind of antidote. She was stressed by the workload, worried about her colleague, angry that he could have been so stupid and guilty that she was pinning the blame for her own problems on a sick man. With nobody else to take her position there was no chance of getting any surface leave, and stuck in an underwater facility there was no way to escape any of her problems. You weren't allowed down here if you got claustrophobic but for the first time the facilities cramped confines were starting to get to her.
And then of course on top of that one of the new guys rotated to guard duty in this area wouldn't stop following her around and trying out pickup lines. She didn't even know why they needed guards, even in a tense situation like this surely nobody could sneak up on them under the ocean?
She was actually surprised she hadn't been ambushed yet, he was usually waiting around when she went to get herself a coffee around this time but there'd been no sign today and... oh God, had she left the laboratory door unlocked? She could see movement through the frosted glass, damn it.
He'd cornered her in there once before and while he wasn't authorised it wasn't like she could get security to boot him out, he was security. She was pretty sure he'd been holding mirrors up to the tanks to make the fish angry too, they might be captured enemy agents but they were her enemy agents damn it!
Steeling herself for an unpleasant confrontation, she slammed the door open and strode inside.
“Harvey that had better not be you in there! I've told you before that you aren't allowed in here and if you've been bothering my fish again so help me I... I...” her coffee dropped to the floor.
One of her cuttlefish stared back at her from eye level, swimming perfectly happily inside the head of a... big, watery snake? The thing cocked its head to the side to stare at her with one large yellow eye and opened a mouth that was far too wide, speaking perfectly fluent English.
”Is Harvey the blonde-haired walker with the mirror? You should not let him do that you know, they think that they are looking at a competitor.
Additionally there is not enough space in here, you should help me put these back where you found them.”
She shut the door again.
Had she been questioning the necessity of guards? Never mind that, they were a wonderful idea. They could come down here and either deal with it or drag her away to a nice padded cell.
Holding the door handle closed with one hand (though the creature hadn't actually attempted to leave yet) she stretched over to shout into the (alas, malfunctioning) intercom a couple of feet along the wall.
“Harvey! Harvey!!
Do your job god damnit, get your ass over here right now!
We're being invaded!”