RE: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 6: Tidal Cove]
03-03-2014, 07:14 AM
Countess' legs and fingers were a mess of scratches; a back foot had almost certainly been bent out of shape when she'd slipped and got it stuck between two boulders.
The lighthouse door was halfway rotted through, squeaking in damp and swollen protest against the poured-concrete floor. They were too heavy to slam open, too warped with age to shove any more open than a few begrudging feet, a slender crack between two shades of gloom through which the Countess snuck.
Clickety tick click sshclick, one foot dragging just enough to scrape the floor.
Once upon a time, there had been something on a planet called Bacchaus, something which would laugh if you called it a lady. First thing in the global evening, before the roar-drone of the street sweepers passed the Glitterati hive, her hive, of her rats and her sisters; Paige-but-call-me-that-and-I'll-kill-you-haha would crawl out onto the balcony, and taste the air.
She breathed sand and salt and mist, sucked drew it in between the myriad teeth of her gears and joints.
She breathed the night to come, laughed-shrieked-sang to the still-sleeping hive of the clubs they'd storm, the fights they'd start, the turf the streets to carve.
Paige was no prophet. She made those nights, realised them.
She'd been such a fucking child back then. Tiny little Bacchaus, her birthplace and birthright. A footnote to her career, a footnote of a footnote of a footnote again in the vast uncaring multiverse. A Countess without her county. A lighthouse without light.
The tower was a husk, exposed from above to leaden miserly clouds that'd never relinquish their rain, never let the sun shine through. Half the spiral staircase had fallen, slumping upon itself like a dead snake's spine. It all loomed in a way that implied it should've fallen in on itself, but held itself together long enough to give Countess an unfriendly welcome.
A mildewed rug muffled the snick-tick-sshnick-tick-click, gave her pause to look down and spy three rotten planks that might've been a trapdoor once. The ring came out with a squeak and screech, so Countess resorted to kicking it until it gave way to a staircase, leading into truer gloom and a cobwebbed door.
Something behind the door moaned, and the corpse of the spiral stairs above trickled dust.
Countess ventured down. The distant sigh of the ocean was interspersed with the occasional, approaching splash.
---
"That is not normal," Holly explained to Algernon, for all the good that'd do. "Is it the worm doing that to you?"
Algernon shook his head; uttered some vocal midpoint of a whimper and a groan. Sitting dejectedly in a steadily-spreading puddle of the stuff, Holly had to convince herself he wasn't actually melting into it. A splash, out in the sea somewhere, gave her something to think about, and she spun around and tried not to step in anything. Shit. Where'd all this fog come from? Holly's sum knowledge of weather systems came from a meteromancer neighbour back in Wizard School, who spent more time fucking around with dorm-sized thunderstorms than properly studying.
The fog had -splash- swept around the cove, swallowing up the two spits and conceding Holly only the briefest glance at the lighthouse's upper reaches, before that too -splash- disappeared. It seemed to roll in from every direction at once, tumbling and slithering over the shore in a way that certainly -splash- wasn't natural.
Holly stared into the fog. Something big smacked the water behind her, and suddenly -splash- Algernon's assorted excretions seemed -splash- pretty benign. She -splash- grabbed him by the arm, snatched -splash- up her satchel of -splash- reagents, and -splash splash splash splash- waded back the way she'd come, back to Delphine's boat, hissing threats to Algernon if he didn't fucking stop flopping around and the splashing was getting louder and closer and it sounded like half the fucking island was collapsing behind her when Holly slammed her bags on the porch, hauled her soaked and shaking self and two bootfuls of silt aboard, and after all that dragging a limply defiant Algernon onto the boards beside her.
Holly's hand came away with an armload of purple slime. She wiped it off on Algenon's shirt. He was staring back at the shore, or more correctly, staring into the unbroken expanse of fog. The splash of rocks and trees and god knows who or what else falling apart and hitting the water continued, but the tiny circle of visible ocean didn't so much as ripple.
From behind them came a more distant tone, like something collapsing and the faintest wail. Holly spun around, and Delphine standing where she hadn't been half a second ago was a bit much for Holly's nerves. Algernon yelped as the pool of silk-and-seawater he was dripping froze over with some forcibly-expunged fear.
"That'll be the tower," murmured Delphine, unreadable as ever. Holly tried to peer around her, make sense of anything in the fog, but nope. Just a shitty wall of shitty impenetrable fog and the sound of an island getting devoured from the bottom up. Was Countess out there? Well, she fucking had to be, now, didn't she?
Algernon whimpered, and Holly seized the opportunity to converse with someone who wasn't Delphine with her barely-hidden little smirk. "Algernon. Your worm, can it still hear Countess?"
The worm wriggled a bit under the scrutiny. "Two people," Algernon mumbled, morose.
"Shit." Delphine had tottered back inside again. "Hey!" Holly yelled from the doorway, not stepping into Delphine's house again if she could help it. "What the fuck is this fog?"
Delphine looked up from the hooks, shuffling the unoccupied ones aside with the worm and the herbs. "You needn't worry." The rag doll and the music box remained above the cauldron, gathering condensation from the rising vapour. Holly sighed explosively.
"Uh, no, I certainly need should worry. I'm sick of smirky assholes knowing more about me than I know about me, and I want an explanation without cauldrons or curses or whatever other half-baked magic you think you're doing."
Delphine hmmmmed, ladled out two bowls of soup from an auxiliary cauldron and passed one to Holly. "I suppose you can stay a little longer. The fog clears in an hour or two."
---
Holly was fuming and ready to do something unpleasant by about ten minutes in. The soup wasn't the worst thing by a long shot; it was a better meal than the salad from the convention despite altogether too much seaweed. Algernon and Delphine managed to combine into something worse than a single conversation partner, and literally nothing except the fucking boat existed. She felt powerless and pissed off and about ready to choke on the silence.
Holly wondered if this was hell.
She'd downgraded to a Category Purgatory by the time a vague suggestion of hills eked its way from the mist. The rhythm of waves on the beach eased back like a volume dial being turned. Algernon sat up a bit at the noise, but looked in the opposite direction. A greyness in the shape of a lighthouse-adorned point emerged from the slightly-lighter greyness. Algernon shuddered; Holly chose to interpret that as him finally getting a chill from his rather disgusting coat.
"I'm leaving," Holly announced, gathering up her skirts and bags in a futile attempt to not get drenched again. "If it's going to be the Swamp all over again because Countess doesn't have the courtesy of having a proper spine to break, I'd rather find her and-"
"Don't."
"I'm joking," Holly rolled her eyes. "Christ. She's probably stuck in mud or something inane."
"Nnnnnnnooo," whined Algernon, flailing a rubbery arm, but Holly had already begun wading for the shore. The worm dug its teeth in, in what was meant to be a sympathetic gesture.
---
She didn't even make it halfway round the point before she heard the yelling, a hysterical near-roar that certainly wasn't Countess, but felt naggingly familiar. Holly pulled out one of Delphine's kitchen knives, if only to feel better, then took a couple more steps.
This was a horrible plan. The mist still insisted on sticking around, slithering off and away and down like it hadn't planned on moving until Holly showed up. The beach had been wiped clean like the tide had rolled in and out, conspicuously untouched.
Something slammed against the lighthouse doors from the inside, before a familiar wince-inducing skittering and a whole bunch more yelling. Holly figured it best to announce her presence from a safe distance.
"Countess!" Holly bellowed. She thought for a second that the screams had drowned her out, before a familiar set of lenses glinted at her round the gap between the doors. The amalgam made a noise of dull surprise, before something yanked her out of sight again. There was another unpleasant half-minute of listening to what probably equated to a malpractice suit, before a bit more steel-feet-on-concrete happened and something was bodily thrown out the door.
A body, to be precise. Countess came staggering out shortly after, to stab the poor fucker (who was still moving, somehow) through the back with a leg, another leg, leave a couple of casual gouges across his neck, and shoot him point-blank between the shoulders with her spark cannon. The spark chamber on her shoulder whined and shattered, shooting little flecks of glass. One of them landed a metre or so from Holly, before melting into a dull grey liquid.
"Lllggglghk who I found," said Countess. Other than the graunching note where the "look" should've been, her tone was organ-box as ever.
"You- uh-"
"I'm vvVvvvvvfine," Countess managed, through the side of her face that was still the right way out. She even grinned a bit, to show Holly she meant it. "Perrrrkfvvvfek-k-k-k-tly fine."
The lighthouse door was halfway rotted through, squeaking in damp and swollen protest against the poured-concrete floor. They were too heavy to slam open, too warped with age to shove any more open than a few begrudging feet, a slender crack between two shades of gloom through which the Countess snuck.
Clickety tick click sshclick, one foot dragging just enough to scrape the floor.
Once upon a time, there had been something on a planet called Bacchaus, something which would laugh if you called it a lady. First thing in the global evening, before the roar-drone of the street sweepers passed the Glitterati hive, her hive, of her rats and her sisters; Paige-but-call-me-that-and-I'll-kill-you-haha would crawl out onto the balcony, and taste the air.
She breathed sand and salt and mist, sucked drew it in between the myriad teeth of her gears and joints.
She breathed the night to come, laughed-shrieked-sang to the still-sleeping hive of the clubs they'd storm, the fights they'd start, the turf the streets to carve.
Paige was no prophet. She made those nights, realised them.
She'd been such a fucking child back then. Tiny little Bacchaus, her birthplace and birthright. A footnote to her career, a footnote of a footnote of a footnote again in the vast uncaring multiverse. A Countess without her county. A lighthouse without light.
The tower was a husk, exposed from above to leaden miserly clouds that'd never relinquish their rain, never let the sun shine through. Half the spiral staircase had fallen, slumping upon itself like a dead snake's spine. It all loomed in a way that implied it should've fallen in on itself, but held itself together long enough to give Countess an unfriendly welcome.
A mildewed rug muffled the snick-tick-sshnick-tick-click, gave her pause to look down and spy three rotten planks that might've been a trapdoor once. The ring came out with a squeak and screech, so Countess resorted to kicking it until it gave way to a staircase, leading into truer gloom and a cobwebbed door.
Something behind the door moaned, and the corpse of the spiral stairs above trickled dust.
Countess ventured down. The distant sigh of the ocean was interspersed with the occasional, approaching splash.
---
"That is not normal," Holly explained to Algernon, for all the good that'd do. "Is it the worm doing that to you?"
Algernon shook his head; uttered some vocal midpoint of a whimper and a groan. Sitting dejectedly in a steadily-spreading puddle of the stuff, Holly had to convince herself he wasn't actually melting into it. A splash, out in the sea somewhere, gave her something to think about, and she spun around and tried not to step in anything. Shit. Where'd all this fog come from? Holly's sum knowledge of weather systems came from a meteromancer neighbour back in Wizard School, who spent more time fucking around with dorm-sized thunderstorms than properly studying.
The fog had -splash- swept around the cove, swallowing up the two spits and conceding Holly only the briefest glance at the lighthouse's upper reaches, before that too -splash- disappeared. It seemed to roll in from every direction at once, tumbling and slithering over the shore in a way that certainly -splash- wasn't natural.
Holly stared into the fog. Something big smacked the water behind her, and suddenly -splash- Algernon's assorted excretions seemed -splash- pretty benign. She -splash- grabbed him by the arm, snatched -splash- up her satchel of -splash- reagents, and -splash splash splash splash- waded back the way she'd come, back to Delphine's boat, hissing threats to Algernon if he didn't fucking stop flopping around and the splashing was getting louder and closer and it sounded like half the fucking island was collapsing behind her when Holly slammed her bags on the porch, hauled her soaked and shaking self and two bootfuls of silt aboard, and after all that dragging a limply defiant Algernon onto the boards beside her.
Holly's hand came away with an armload of purple slime. She wiped it off on Algenon's shirt. He was staring back at the shore, or more correctly, staring into the unbroken expanse of fog. The splash of rocks and trees and god knows who or what else falling apart and hitting the water continued, but the tiny circle of visible ocean didn't so much as ripple.
From behind them came a more distant tone, like something collapsing and the faintest wail. Holly spun around, and Delphine standing where she hadn't been half a second ago was a bit much for Holly's nerves. Algernon yelped as the pool of silk-and-seawater he was dripping froze over with some forcibly-expunged fear.
"That'll be the tower," murmured Delphine, unreadable as ever. Holly tried to peer around her, make sense of anything in the fog, but nope. Just a shitty wall of shitty impenetrable fog and the sound of an island getting devoured from the bottom up. Was Countess out there? Well, she fucking had to be, now, didn't she?
Algernon whimpered, and Holly seized the opportunity to converse with someone who wasn't Delphine with her barely-hidden little smirk. "Algernon. Your worm, can it still hear Countess?"
The worm wriggled a bit under the scrutiny. "Two people," Algernon mumbled, morose.
"Shit." Delphine had tottered back inside again. "Hey!" Holly yelled from the doorway, not stepping into Delphine's house again if she could help it. "What the fuck is this fog?"
Delphine looked up from the hooks, shuffling the unoccupied ones aside with the worm and the herbs. "You needn't worry." The rag doll and the music box remained above the cauldron, gathering condensation from the rising vapour. Holly sighed explosively.
"Uh, no, I certainly need should worry. I'm sick of smirky assholes knowing more about me than I know about me, and I want an explanation without cauldrons or curses or whatever other half-baked magic you think you're doing."
Delphine hmmmmed, ladled out two bowls of soup from an auxiliary cauldron and passed one to Holly. "I suppose you can stay a little longer. The fog clears in an hour or two."
---
Holly was fuming and ready to do something unpleasant by about ten minutes in. The soup wasn't the worst thing by a long shot; it was a better meal than the salad from the convention despite altogether too much seaweed. Algernon and Delphine managed to combine into something worse than a single conversation partner, and literally nothing except the fucking boat existed. She felt powerless and pissed off and about ready to choke on the silence.
Holly wondered if this was hell.
She'd downgraded to a Category Purgatory by the time a vague suggestion of hills eked its way from the mist. The rhythm of waves on the beach eased back like a volume dial being turned. Algernon sat up a bit at the noise, but looked in the opposite direction. A greyness in the shape of a lighthouse-adorned point emerged from the slightly-lighter greyness. Algernon shuddered; Holly chose to interpret that as him finally getting a chill from his rather disgusting coat.
"I'm leaving," Holly announced, gathering up her skirts and bags in a futile attempt to not get drenched again. "If it's going to be the Swamp all over again because Countess doesn't have the courtesy of having a proper spine to break, I'd rather find her and-"
"Don't."
"I'm joking," Holly rolled her eyes. "Christ. She's probably stuck in mud or something inane."
"Nnnnnnnooo," whined Algernon, flailing a rubbery arm, but Holly had already begun wading for the shore. The worm dug its teeth in, in what was meant to be a sympathetic gesture.
---
She didn't even make it halfway round the point before she heard the yelling, a hysterical near-roar that certainly wasn't Countess, but felt naggingly familiar. Holly pulled out one of Delphine's kitchen knives, if only to feel better, then took a couple more steps.
This was a horrible plan. The mist still insisted on sticking around, slithering off and away and down like it hadn't planned on moving until Holly showed up. The beach had been wiped clean like the tide had rolled in and out, conspicuously untouched.
Something slammed against the lighthouse doors from the inside, before a familiar wince-inducing skittering and a whole bunch more yelling. Holly figured it best to announce her presence from a safe distance.
"Countess!" Holly bellowed. She thought for a second that the screams had drowned her out, before a familiar set of lenses glinted at her round the gap between the doors. The amalgam made a noise of dull surprise, before something yanked her out of sight again. There was another unpleasant half-minute of listening to what probably equated to a malpractice suit, before a bit more steel-feet-on-concrete happened and something was bodily thrown out the door.
A body, to be precise. Countess came staggering out shortly after, to stab the poor fucker (who was still moving, somehow) through the back with a leg, another leg, leave a couple of casual gouges across his neck, and shoot him point-blank between the shoulders with her spark cannon. The spark chamber on her shoulder whined and shattered, shooting little flecks of glass. One of them landed a metre or so from Holly, before melting into a dull grey liquid.
"Lllggglghk who I found," said Countess. Other than the graunching note where the "look" should've been, her tone was organ-box as ever.
"You- uh-"
"I'm vvVvvvvvfine," Countess managed, through the side of her face that was still the right way out. She even grinned a bit, to show Holly she meant it. "Perrrrkfvvvfek-k-k-k-tly fine."
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