RE: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 6: Tidal Cove]
10-09-2013, 01:23 AM
(This post was last modified: 02-07-2014, 05:17 AM by MaxieSatan.)
Holly hated beaches. Of course, recently she’d been hating just about everything, but she especially hated beaches, and had for quite some time.
To begin with, she was used to trees, shade; generally, she viewed the sun more as something to stream through the leaves, half-faded by the time it reached the ground, not something to be focused on you full-blast so you could bake your skin into a golden-brown. Then there was the population – either practically nobody was around, leaving her alone with her thoughts (which, frankly, was tedious even before her self-hatred began independently vocalizing), or there were so many people you couldn’t walk three feet without tripping over someone. The latter wouldn’t have been so bad, of course, if there were any good materials around, if she could screw with people, but the beach barely had more to work with than the desert. Sand, shells, seaweed, all basically useless; some people were looking into redirecting the energy from waves into agitation, or vice versa, but that was so obvious, and required such precise timing, that it was basically useless to even try.
“Shit,” she mumbled, withdrawing an arm from the strap of her knapsack and swinging it to her front. She patted it down, and found altogether too much give. She was running low on materials, and she had no idea where the hell she was going to find more. She could take some rocks, maybe? That’d be better than nothing.
Holly shook her head, trying to focus on the task at hand. Simple as following the right signal, which was more or less the same as usual – lots of confusion, bit of sadness, and the interesting addition of anger and betrayal, thankfully fading not that it matters, because you’ll remember no matter what he forgets. Just had to keep walking through the stupid, godawful sand that kept getting in her stupid, godawful shoes. Holly grumbled a bit, but kept trudging onward until she managed to make out a figure lying next to the coast.
Breaking into a run, she quickly realized that Algernon was especially out of sorts; he seemed to be clutching his stomach with one hand and rubbing his temple with the other, and for some reason, there was... some pale purple stuff floating on the water. Maybe it was algae or seaweed or something? She’d definitely seen worse than weird-colored seaweed by now.
“Algy.” No response. She crouched down next to him, repeating, a bit louder this time, “Algernon?” This time he managed to get out a groan. Some of the purple substance dripped out of his mouth in long, thin strands, pooling when it hit the water. Holly winced, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of her dress and pulling him to his feet. “Get the hell up, already. You’re not doing yourself any favors.”
He managed to quietly groan a “where” before lurching and heaving some more onto the sand. After a long pause and a deep breath, he stood up in as tall and balanced a manner as he could (which is to say that he made the town drunk seem to have the finest motor control for miles around) and asked “Where are we?”
Holly sighed, and started walking again, dragging Algernon with her; he put up no resistance. “Hell if I know. Some shitty beach or something. He didn’t really say, uh... anything about it.” In retrospect, that was more than a little odd. Had he said less before last round, too? No, that was her imagination, trying to form patterns where there were none, trying to find hope where none could exist. Still, to just dump them here, no explanation...
“Fuck,” she whispered, then walked a few more steps before repeating herself much more loudly. Algernon jerked back, barely managing not to tumble over entirely; a couple nearby gulls flew off into the distance. “He’s pulling something, he’s got to be, the piece of shit.” It occurred to her that that statement could just as easily apply to LeMarche as the Controller, and thinking about it further, she wasn’t sure who she meant to direct it towards. Maybe both of them.
Holly took a deep breath, trying to focus on what she did know about the situation, and narrowed it down to about four things:
Sighing, she made a beeline for the houseboat, Algernon’s limp body leaving a trail in the sand that his mouth occasionally saw fit to decorate with a splash of mauve. It wasn’t like they had reason to go much anywhere else.
------------------
Betrayal. He’d always thought he would hear the word a lot more than he’d experience it. That’s what people always said, wasn’t it? The one thing nobles had to worry about more than soldiers and commoners was betrayal.
Of course, then he got lucky. He’d always been lucky, they said. Lucky enough to survive a battle that left five thousand Christians and eight thousand Moors dead in the mud, without an inch of territory gained or lost. Lucky enough to win a tournament when he knew he didn’t deserve it, all because the sun was improperly apportioned and got in the other man’s eyes. Lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time when a giant barely triumphed over ten men, and become famed for the killing blow as if the poor bastard wouldn’t have bled out by that evening anyway. And lucky enough to become immortal, of course.
He took it in stride. Things didn’t always go perfectly; his fellow survivors and his vanquished rivals showed no anger towards him, and that was all he needed. And he truly did help people; if ever a knight truly held himself to chivalry, Arnold was that knight. But rising from lowborn to lord and protector was unlucky in that one respect; it exposed one to tremendous betrayals.
He watched as Merlin, the wisest man between Ireland and Arabia, was trapped, seemingly forever, in a simple oak of all things. He’d tried to rescue him, more than once, but gave up after a couple centuries. He watched as the knights turned against each other, even Arthur and Lancelot, as the enchantress took their flaws and saw them amplified and applied wherever most harmful, until the Round Table could no longer last. He watched as the kingdom descended into civil war, and he watched as Harald and The Bastard massacred each other’s people.
He watched the coronation, where The Bastard, reviled, was now The Conqueror, beloved. Some still dissented, but many bit their tongues, and most didn’t care at all. Better a Norman yoke than fields unplowed and ravaged, his uncle said.
He traveled, and heard about men of all sorts constantly scheming against each other for power or vengeance. Even great religious leaders, meant to be paragons to their people, getting their positions through subterfuge only to be similarly undone.
And yet, through all of it, he retained hope. Because some men were not betrayers, he told himself. Some men are honorable, some men keep their word, some men will go to the ends of the earth to uphold their duty and protect their people.
But he realized now he was no man. He was a god among men, and all because of luck; he had no need to worry about betrayal, for what could any man do to him that time would not ensure? And this – consciously or otherwise – had comforted him, for he had once believed that no physical pain could be worse than the scars of betrayal, and if that was true, he was as good as invincible.
But he was wrong. Physical pain, it turned out, could be far worse than anything else, and when the torturer had centuries of practice and could shape reality to his will, it could break even the strongest man. The door opened with a creak, and the light shined on him. It seemed like forever since he had been free of almost total darkness. For a moment, he thought it might be a relief, but he quickly realized that it only made him feel worse.
------------------
Holly grumbled as she waded towards the cabin, struggling to keep Algernon over her shoulder. The outfit looked nice enough, but as soon as it was put through a proper test, it became very clear that it was made as an amateur project; the materials did not play well with water. She idly wondered if it was a bad idea to leave her bag on the sand, but decided that two soggy dresses and a bunch of ruined reagents was hardly any better than one soggy dress and shit all else.
Upon reaching the porch/dock/whatever the hell you called the damn thing, she flung her cargo aboard before clambering on herself. “Hey, try not to get any of that... whatever-that-is on the whatever-you-call-this-thing, alright, Algy?” Algernon responded by groaning, shuddering, and totally ignoring this request. “Right, okay, great.”
Holly sighed and approached the door, but it opened up before she got a chance to knock. In front of her was a fairly small woman, clearly aged but gracefully so; she looked up as she wrung out a rag. Something about her eyes made Holly feel uneasy – not worried or suspicious, per se, just ever-so-slightly on edge. She spoke softly, yet her voice seemed to drown out the waves. “Oh, you two. Come in, then.”
Holly stared at her in bafflement. “Aren’t you, uh, going to ask why we’re here or anything?”
Delphine responded with a humorless chuckle and waved the two of them in, heading back inside before her visitor could protest any further. “I think I have much more important questions at hand, ones I’m not sure you can answer. And besides, why waste time on particulars when you already have the broad strokes?”
To begin with, she was used to trees, shade; generally, she viewed the sun more as something to stream through the leaves, half-faded by the time it reached the ground, not something to be focused on you full-blast so you could bake your skin into a golden-brown. Then there was the population – either practically nobody was around, leaving her alone with her thoughts (which, frankly, was tedious even before her self-hatred began independently vocalizing), or there were so many people you couldn’t walk three feet without tripping over someone. The latter wouldn’t have been so bad, of course, if there were any good materials around, if she could screw with people, but the beach barely had more to work with than the desert. Sand, shells, seaweed, all basically useless; some people were looking into redirecting the energy from waves into agitation, or vice versa, but that was so obvious, and required such precise timing, that it was basically useless to even try.
“Shit,” she mumbled, withdrawing an arm from the strap of her knapsack and swinging it to her front. She patted it down, and found altogether too much give. She was running low on materials, and she had no idea where the hell she was going to find more. She could take some rocks, maybe? That’d be better than nothing.
Holly shook her head, trying to focus on the task at hand. Simple as following the right signal, which was more or less the same as usual – lots of confusion, bit of sadness, and the interesting addition of anger and betrayal, thankfully fading not that it matters, because you’ll remember no matter what he forgets. Just had to keep walking through the stupid, godawful sand that kept getting in her stupid, godawful shoes. Holly grumbled a bit, but kept trudging onward until she managed to make out a figure lying next to the coast.
Breaking into a run, she quickly realized that Algernon was especially out of sorts; he seemed to be clutching his stomach with one hand and rubbing his temple with the other, and for some reason, there was... some pale purple stuff floating on the water. Maybe it was algae or seaweed or something? She’d definitely seen worse than weird-colored seaweed by now.
“Algy.” No response. She crouched down next to him, repeating, a bit louder this time, “Algernon?” This time he managed to get out a groan. Some of the purple substance dripped out of his mouth in long, thin strands, pooling when it hit the water. Holly winced, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of her dress and pulling him to his feet. “Get the hell up, already. You’re not doing yourself any favors.”
He managed to quietly groan a “where” before lurching and heaving some more onto the sand. After a long pause and a deep breath, he stood up in as tall and balanced a manner as he could (which is to say that he made the town drunk seem to have the finest motor control for miles around) and asked “Where are we?”
Holly sighed, and started walking again, dragging Algernon with her; he put up no resistance. “Hell if I know. Some shitty beach or something. He didn’t really say, uh... anything about it.” In retrospect, that was more than a little odd. Had he said less before last round, too? No, that was her imagination, trying to form patterns where there were none, trying to find hope where none could exist. Still, to just dump them here, no explanation...
“Fuck,” she whispered, then walked a few more steps before repeating herself much more loudly. Algernon jerked back, barely managing not to tumble over entirely; a couple nearby gulls flew off into the distance. “He’s pulling something, he’s got to be, the piece of shit.” It occurred to her that that statement could just as easily apply to LeMarche as the Controller, and thinking about it further, she wasn’t sure who she meant to direct it towards. Maybe both of them.
Holly took a deep breath, trying to focus on what she did know about the situation, and narrowed it down to about four things:
- Wherever they were, it contained a shitty beach, a forest, that tower way over there, and some kind of houseboat-cabin thing, what the fuck was that even supposed to be?
- Algernon was vomiting god only knows what and she really would like him to stop.
- Countess was somewhere else. The tower, if she could be trusted as if you can fucking trust anyone, as if she’s not having the exact same thoughts about you but honestly where the fuck else would she have gone and why would it matter? Her guard was up, it wasn’t like she was getting ambushed any time soon.
- They were completely fucked, it was all hopeless, and damned if she’d give up while the three of them were still drawing breath.
Sighing, she made a beeline for the houseboat, Algernon’s limp body leaving a trail in the sand that his mouth occasionally saw fit to decorate with a splash of mauve. It wasn’t like they had reason to go much anywhere else.
------------------
Betrayal. He’d always thought he would hear the word a lot more than he’d experience it. That’s what people always said, wasn’t it? The one thing nobles had to worry about more than soldiers and commoners was betrayal.
Of course, then he got lucky. He’d always been lucky, they said. Lucky enough to survive a battle that left five thousand Christians and eight thousand Moors dead in the mud, without an inch of territory gained or lost. Lucky enough to win a tournament when he knew he didn’t deserve it, all because the sun was improperly apportioned and got in the other man’s eyes. Lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time when a giant barely triumphed over ten men, and become famed for the killing blow as if the poor bastard wouldn’t have bled out by that evening anyway. And lucky enough to become immortal, of course.
He took it in stride. Things didn’t always go perfectly; his fellow survivors and his vanquished rivals showed no anger towards him, and that was all he needed. And he truly did help people; if ever a knight truly held himself to chivalry, Arnold was that knight. But rising from lowborn to lord and protector was unlucky in that one respect; it exposed one to tremendous betrayals.
He watched as Merlin, the wisest man between Ireland and Arabia, was trapped, seemingly forever, in a simple oak of all things. He’d tried to rescue him, more than once, but gave up after a couple centuries. He watched as the knights turned against each other, even Arthur and Lancelot, as the enchantress took their flaws and saw them amplified and applied wherever most harmful, until the Round Table could no longer last. He watched as the kingdom descended into civil war, and he watched as Harald and The Bastard massacred each other’s people.
He watched the coronation, where The Bastard, reviled, was now The Conqueror, beloved. Some still dissented, but many bit their tongues, and most didn’t care at all. Better a Norman yoke than fields unplowed and ravaged, his uncle said.
He traveled, and heard about men of all sorts constantly scheming against each other for power or vengeance. Even great religious leaders, meant to be paragons to their people, getting their positions through subterfuge only to be similarly undone.
And yet, through all of it, he retained hope. Because some men were not betrayers, he told himself. Some men are honorable, some men keep their word, some men will go to the ends of the earth to uphold their duty and protect their people.
But he realized now he was no man. He was a god among men, and all because of luck; he had no need to worry about betrayal, for what could any man do to him that time would not ensure? And this – consciously or otherwise – had comforted him, for he had once believed that no physical pain could be worse than the scars of betrayal, and if that was true, he was as good as invincible.
But he was wrong. Physical pain, it turned out, could be far worse than anything else, and when the torturer had centuries of practice and could shape reality to his will, it could break even the strongest man. The door opened with a creak, and the light shined on him. It seemed like forever since he had been free of almost total darkness. For a moment, he thought it might be a relief, but he quickly realized that it only made him feel worse.
------------------
Holly grumbled as she waded towards the cabin, struggling to keep Algernon over her shoulder. The outfit looked nice enough, but as soon as it was put through a proper test, it became very clear that it was made as an amateur project; the materials did not play well with water. She idly wondered if it was a bad idea to leave her bag on the sand, but decided that two soggy dresses and a bunch of ruined reagents was hardly any better than one soggy dress and shit all else.
Upon reaching the porch/dock/whatever the hell you called the damn thing, she flung her cargo aboard before clambering on herself. “Hey, try not to get any of that... whatever-that-is on the whatever-you-call-this-thing, alright, Algy?” Algernon responded by groaning, shuddering, and totally ignoring this request. “Right, okay, great.”
Holly sighed and approached the door, but it opened up before she got a chance to knock. In front of her was a fairly small woman, clearly aged but gracefully so; she looked up as she wrung out a rag. Something about her eyes made Holly feel uneasy – not worried or suspicious, per se, just ever-so-slightly on edge. She spoke softly, yet her voice seemed to drown out the waves. “Oh, you two. Come in, then.”
Holly stared at her in bafflement. “Aren’t you, uh, going to ask why we’re here or anything?”
Delphine responded with a humorless chuckle and waved the two of them in, heading back inside before her visitor could protest any further. “I think I have much more important questions at hand, ones I’m not sure you can answer. And besides, why waste time on particulars when you already have the broad strokes?”