RE: The Battle Majestic (Round 4 - Magpie Skies)
09-04-2013, 03:29 PM
"Wow," said Sen, allowing himself another internal "wow" at this whole vocalising business. "I can't believe that worked."
He looked up, already expecting a red dot amongst the clouds, and flexed a claw. A flash of red striking out from the horizon's stormclouds caused momentary excitement, but it was just a red dragon. The Grey Queen's domain, then? It was too early in the afternoon for Jonquil's castle to catch the light and reveal its location, so Sen had no idea when his companion would float its way home.
Sen's first impressions of himself would've been of a latently magical beast, some fanciful pet or royal symbol of the Verdilands. The hat had barely settled in when the cellar doors of disappointment slammed open in the high wind, revealing a damp insipid tomb where it had expected a fount of magical potential.
Sen frowned, because the counterargument was the fact he'd just thought a balloon through a not-insignificant chunk of masonry. He'd been expecting to have to go break the balloon out with his own two hands. Feet. Whatever these were supposed to be. He sighed, because he made no bloody sense.
Something blocked out the sun, which registered on his skin like a blanket he wasn't aware of being peeled away. Weird.
He turned, and looked up. Oh. "Wow." He clambered back to the top of the hill, and surveyed his handiwork.
The beanstalk wasn't so much one stalk as a braided agglom, and wasn't so much a collection of stalks as it was a steadily-broadening pillar. Buttressing stems snaked across the meadow like grey-green scar tissue; a festering wound on the land's skin. Sen noted, rather than especially reacted to, a pinball-ricochet of plant-dopamines through something that definitely wasn't his brain. Did he even have a central nervous system?
He could remember plants like this; he was capable of memory, which was surprising in of itself. The actual process of recollection, however, was dissatisfying - footage on amateur equipment, by some amateur consciousness who (until recnetly) lacked the capacity to pore back over its recordings, and by extension lacked the foresight to make them very organised. Or intelligible. Sen could see the beanstalk and it was just the most brilliant thing and he should've been so so proud of himself even though his work wasn't over yet, but there was nothing on hand or mind to explain what his work was.
Another, anarchic part of Sen just appreciated a good diaster-in-the-making when it saw one. Nebulous obligations be damned, he knew this shitwrecker was his to wreck shit with, and he could think of a lot of eligible shit.
Sen stepped over a buttress root as he approached the beanstalk, looking for a way up friendly for the armless and dangerous. The plant sprouted an obliging stem, politely horizontal and swiftly joined by a similar one, each further up and across the trunk by one easy step. He perched, adjusted his balance, and laid a hand on the World Tree. Fresh stems peeled off the main trunk, tending flat for long enough to accommodate a radioactive bird-lizard-pear before shooting for the sun again, transforming the pillar into some kind of poplar-esque canedelebra.
Sen would've clapped with delight. If, you know.
---
The carpet began to veer, but the vaguely human-shaped pile of blue fabric piloting it didn't seem especially alarmed.
"Gotta detour, yer Majesty," pre-empted the carpeteer. "'nusual cloudform ahead-"
"We don't have time," said Violet.
"They're mountain clouds," mumbled the robes, though he knew better than to argue with a queen's orders. "Th' wind's unpredictable where tha lands meet."
"Fuchsia Palace is above the Ridgelands, and we have carpeteers every day-"
"We're nowhere near th' Palace yet, yer Majesty." With a mostly-muffled quickening to his voice indicative of proper alarm, he added: "We're nowhere near any mountains."
What Violet had mistaken for a somewhat disoriented horizon suddenly parsed as a drab, flat cloud. It looked every definition of abnormal. Unwelcome, though that was more a gut instinct of anything invading the skies out of nowhere. Her thoughts flicked back to Steven, wondering if this was one of the fighters he was up against. "How much time lost if we fly around it?"
The pilot tutted. "Least an hour, yer Majesty. Longer if it's bigger'n I reckon, and I can't tell yer how big it is."
"Fly over," commanded the queen, hoping the cloud wasn't inhabited. Half the point to living on clouds was the fact you were above crude landsiders and their ilk; flying over a settlement in turn was asking for a generations-spanning turf war.
"Flyin' over," grumbled the pilot. Violet readied her sword.
---
"Oh good, you're awake."
Effectively buggered for better ideas, Sruix was forced to sit on his thumbs and wait for Steven to regain consciousness. Steven groaned, and just pretended for a bit that there wasn't an ex-Gentleman hovering around him. It wasn't difficult, because something else immediately registered as being off.
The gloves. Steven sat up, and - before him or Sruix were aware of what he was doing - he'd punched the Gentleman in the jaw. Barefisted. It hurt in more ways than one, but Sruix certainly hadn't been expecting it because Steven wanted blood, he was fucked, what the hell hope did he expect to have to survive this without them, what the hell else could he do right now except take his frustrations out on what had to be the most pathetic omnipotent entity in the history of the Multiverse-
"If you're, um, quite finished," came a voice from over his shoulder. Steven knew better than to look, but did anyway. Sruix was putting away a spectacle case, and adjusting his pose as if to assert he definitely was standing here, and not prone and being wailed on by some interstellar vagrant.
Steven glanced back down, then back up. "God fucking-"
"I'm not here," Sruix hurriedly added, "to mock you or taunt you or anything. If it makes you feel better, I'm here because Talis betrayed me. Us, I suppose." It didn't, and Steven didn't appreciate being lumped with his captors. He stood up and at least tried to look like a plausible threat while he did it. "Now, I could understand your surmising you had nothing to left to lose and you'd make a sterling effort trying to kill me now-" Steven just growled "-but on the other hand, I'm your best hope for help if you want to see the gloves again. Not," Sruix said, almost testily, from a separate direction as Steven tried to punch the Gentleman again, "a threat."
"Are you crazy? How the hell could I trust you?"
"Well-"
"No," Steven said. He'd been staring at his hands, but his glare ripped through the Gentleman. "I can't trust you. If I think I'm desperate, you must be a hundred times worse right now. As soon as either of us is in a position to get the gloves back, you'll claim them for yourself. Did your friend head back into the castle?"
"No, but I really do think the turncoating is more his style than mine-"
"The grey queen?"
"She's over on that gold castle, off on the horizon, but-"
Steven wasn't listening, jogging away under the shade of the curtain wall.
---
As soon as the lay of the cloud resolved itself, Violet regretted risking anything to do with it. This thing was unnatural, a flat expanse of cloud locked in the sky like some gross extension of the Surface. Eerie not-quite trees snaked from the cloudform, some lazy approximation of a plant with too many too-large leaves on too-slender stems. Violet had never seen the Green Queen's gardens, had only ever seen trees in paintings.
She'd seen enough to know this apparition that had appeared in their skies was wrong. The plants swaddled the cloud rather than the other way around, roots enmeshing the white so densely they sprouted out the bottom and the sides of the cloud. Violet could've sworn the roots turned, tracked her progress as the carpet flew by, but figured best not mention it to the carpeteer. She'd already told him to skirt it rather than fly over; whatever this was, it was a threat she couldn't handle alone, which made passage to Fuchsia Palace all the more urgent.
Violet stared into the forest without really staring at it, alert to movement within the motionless plants without giving her pilot cause for concern.
There.
The queen stood, hand leaping to her sword and ignoring the Blue's protests. Something stepped into view on delicate legs, blinked, grinned, waved, fell over, and scrambled back to its feet and adjusted its hat.
"Sup," barked the witch. Her smile was a mile of needles, crammed and clicking and laughing in a too-small space.
He looked up, already expecting a red dot amongst the clouds, and flexed a claw. A flash of red striking out from the horizon's stormclouds caused momentary excitement, but it was just a red dragon. The Grey Queen's domain, then? It was too early in the afternoon for Jonquil's castle to catch the light and reveal its location, so Sen had no idea when his companion would float its way home.
Sen's first impressions of himself would've been of a latently magical beast, some fanciful pet or royal symbol of the Verdilands. The hat had barely settled in when the cellar doors of disappointment slammed open in the high wind, revealing a damp insipid tomb where it had expected a fount of magical potential.
Sen frowned, because the counterargument was the fact he'd just thought a balloon through a not-insignificant chunk of masonry. He'd been expecting to have to go break the balloon out with his own two hands. Feet. Whatever these were supposed to be. He sighed, because he made no bloody sense.
Something blocked out the sun, which registered on his skin like a blanket he wasn't aware of being peeled away. Weird.
He turned, and looked up. Oh. "Wow." He clambered back to the top of the hill, and surveyed his handiwork.
The beanstalk wasn't so much one stalk as a braided agglom, and wasn't so much a collection of stalks as it was a steadily-broadening pillar. Buttressing stems snaked across the meadow like grey-green scar tissue; a festering wound on the land's skin. Sen noted, rather than especially reacted to, a pinball-ricochet of plant-dopamines through something that definitely wasn't his brain. Did he even have a central nervous system?
He could remember plants like this; he was capable of memory, which was surprising in of itself. The actual process of recollection, however, was dissatisfying - footage on amateur equipment, by some amateur consciousness who (until recnetly) lacked the capacity to pore back over its recordings, and by extension lacked the foresight to make them very organised. Or intelligible. Sen could see the beanstalk and it was just the most brilliant thing and he should've been so so proud of himself even though his work wasn't over yet, but there was nothing on hand or mind to explain what his work was.
Another, anarchic part of Sen just appreciated a good diaster-in-the-making when it saw one. Nebulous obligations be damned, he knew this shitwrecker was his to wreck shit with, and he could think of a lot of eligible shit.
Sen stepped over a buttress root as he approached the beanstalk, looking for a way up friendly for the armless and dangerous. The plant sprouted an obliging stem, politely horizontal and swiftly joined by a similar one, each further up and across the trunk by one easy step. He perched, adjusted his balance, and laid a hand on the World Tree. Fresh stems peeled off the main trunk, tending flat for long enough to accommodate a radioactive bird-lizard-pear before shooting for the sun again, transforming the pillar into some kind of poplar-esque canedelebra.
Sen would've clapped with delight. If, you know.
---
The carpet began to veer, but the vaguely human-shaped pile of blue fabric piloting it didn't seem especially alarmed.
"Gotta detour, yer Majesty," pre-empted the carpeteer. "'nusual cloudform ahead-"
"We don't have time," said Violet.
"They're mountain clouds," mumbled the robes, though he knew better than to argue with a queen's orders. "Th' wind's unpredictable where tha lands meet."
"Fuchsia Palace is above the Ridgelands, and we have carpeteers every day-"
"We're nowhere near th' Palace yet, yer Majesty." With a mostly-muffled quickening to his voice indicative of proper alarm, he added: "We're nowhere near any mountains."
What Violet had mistaken for a somewhat disoriented horizon suddenly parsed as a drab, flat cloud. It looked every definition of abnormal. Unwelcome, though that was more a gut instinct of anything invading the skies out of nowhere. Her thoughts flicked back to Steven, wondering if this was one of the fighters he was up against. "How much time lost if we fly around it?"
The pilot tutted. "Least an hour, yer Majesty. Longer if it's bigger'n I reckon, and I can't tell yer how big it is."
"Fly over," commanded the queen, hoping the cloud wasn't inhabited. Half the point to living on clouds was the fact you were above crude landsiders and their ilk; flying over a settlement in turn was asking for a generations-spanning turf war.
"Flyin' over," grumbled the pilot. Violet readied her sword.
---
"Oh good, you're awake."
Effectively buggered for better ideas, Sruix was forced to sit on his thumbs and wait for Steven to regain consciousness. Steven groaned, and just pretended for a bit that there wasn't an ex-Gentleman hovering around him. It wasn't difficult, because something else immediately registered as being off.
The gloves. Steven sat up, and - before him or Sruix were aware of what he was doing - he'd punched the Gentleman in the jaw. Barefisted. It hurt in more ways than one, but Sruix certainly hadn't been expecting it because Steven wanted blood, he was fucked, what the hell hope did he expect to have to survive this without them, what the hell else could he do right now except take his frustrations out on what had to be the most pathetic omnipotent entity in the history of the Multiverse-
"If you're, um, quite finished," came a voice from over his shoulder. Steven knew better than to look, but did anyway. Sruix was putting away a spectacle case, and adjusting his pose as if to assert he definitely was standing here, and not prone and being wailed on by some interstellar vagrant.
Steven glanced back down, then back up. "God fucking-"
"I'm not here," Sruix hurriedly added, "to mock you or taunt you or anything. If it makes you feel better, I'm here because Talis betrayed me. Us, I suppose." It didn't, and Steven didn't appreciate being lumped with his captors. He stood up and at least tried to look like a plausible threat while he did it. "Now, I could understand your surmising you had nothing to left to lose and you'd make a sterling effort trying to kill me now-" Steven just growled "-but on the other hand, I'm your best hope for help if you want to see the gloves again. Not," Sruix said, almost testily, from a separate direction as Steven tried to punch the Gentleman again, "a threat."
"Are you crazy? How the hell could I trust you?"
"Well-"
"No," Steven said. He'd been staring at his hands, but his glare ripped through the Gentleman. "I can't trust you. If I think I'm desperate, you must be a hundred times worse right now. As soon as either of us is in a position to get the gloves back, you'll claim them for yourself. Did your friend head back into the castle?"
"No, but I really do think the turncoating is more his style than mine-"
"The grey queen?"
"She's over on that gold castle, off on the horizon, but-"
Steven wasn't listening, jogging away under the shade of the curtain wall.
---
As soon as the lay of the cloud resolved itself, Violet regretted risking anything to do with it. This thing was unnatural, a flat expanse of cloud locked in the sky like some gross extension of the Surface. Eerie not-quite trees snaked from the cloudform, some lazy approximation of a plant with too many too-large leaves on too-slender stems. Violet had never seen the Green Queen's gardens, had only ever seen trees in paintings.
She'd seen enough to know this apparition that had appeared in their skies was wrong. The plants swaddled the cloud rather than the other way around, roots enmeshing the white so densely they sprouted out the bottom and the sides of the cloud. Violet could've sworn the roots turned, tracked her progress as the carpet flew by, but figured best not mention it to the carpeteer. She'd already told him to skirt it rather than fly over; whatever this was, it was a threat she couldn't handle alone, which made passage to Fuchsia Palace all the more urgent.
Violet stared into the forest without really staring at it, alert to movement within the motionless plants without giving her pilot cause for concern.
There.
The queen stood, hand leaping to her sword and ignoring the Blue's protests. Something stepped into view on delicate legs, blinked, grinned, waved, fell over, and scrambled back to its feet and adjusted its hat.
"Sup," barked the witch. Her smile was a mile of needles, crammed and clicking and laughing in a too-small space.
peace to the unsung peace to the martyrs | i'm johnny rotten appleseed
clouds is shaky love | broke as hell but i got a bunch of ringtones
eyes blood red bruise aubergine | Sue took something now Sue doesn't sleep | saint average, day in the life of
woke up in the noon smelling doom and death | out the house, great outdoors
staying warm in arctic blizzard | that's my battle 'til I get inanimate | still up in the same clothes living like a gameshow
clouds is shaky love | broke as hell but i got a bunch of ringtones
eyes blood red bruise aubergine | Sue took something now Sue doesn't sleep | saint average, day in the life of
woke up in the noon smelling doom and death | out the house, great outdoors
staying warm in arctic blizzard | that's my battle 'til I get inanimate | still up in the same clothes living like a gameshow