RE: QUIETUS [S!5] [Round 2: Krei'kii'kelriz]
10-16-2014, 03:36 PM
Light, a faint orange glow, peeked around a dingy corner and impinged upon surfaces that hadn’t seen light in centuries; it laughed and watched dust motes stir from their comfortable resting places. It shone on disused panels that hung by their corners in front of filled-in maintenance hatches (inside, things like dried out intestines or decaying rubber sleeves gave the impression of having glistened once) and dimly scattered, spreading what little warmth could be given to a glacial, eternal winter.
In the frozen dust behind Her began a track of molten footprints, each one marked with a spray of metal vapor. In the vacuum, with no air to burn, Her eyes glowed blue-white. Her gaze threw sunburn at twenty meters, give you cancer easy at ten, kill you straight at five. Divine power blazed inside Her little sun, annihilation of antimatter to Her measly fusion, C4 to Her gunpowder, outright war to Her trade sanction; it fueled Her rage, and Her rage fueled it. She wanted things to burn, and She would have let loose on the ship about Her - if it were not for the fact that She would rather have unleashed it all on the Outsider. But no, that last visit lasted no time at all. A curling lick of orange plasma escaped from Her lips as She sighed into the vacuum. The Outsider had taken it all away, just as it was getting good.
She shook herself. Good? Being an omnipotent homicidal maniac was supposed to be good? She recognized, on a fundamental level, that divinity did not suit her. It scared the electrons off of her atoms - raw power, unbound by any fundamental principles or physical laws? Of such things are Outsiders made of. Perhaps. Hold on to it too long, and it would destroy her.
But maybe there was something she could do.
Rachel took a deep, unnecessary breath of absolutely nothing at all, and exhaled something that was not air into the corridor. When she was done, and it had all coalesced into a tiny floating orb of blue, she sagged and contrived to look slightly less immortal. A fair few impatient moments had to pass before she began to walk, and then bounce, and then float towards the innards of the ship, the blue marble orbiting her head.
Sometimes gods have to walk among mortals for a little bit. Plus, all that divine power was beginning to chafe.
---
“...and so, I went and took this map the nice lady gave me and I used it on doors that went ‘KA-CHUMPH’ a lot!” Anila illustrated with a downward swipe of her blue-tinged hand, sending her somersaulting across the weightless chamber. “Then I stuck it in this slot, and it nearly blew off my hand, but Wizard Jelly helped me out!”
sigh
“Then we went driving! It was the funnest thing ever, unless you count the other time I went driving in a tank and went WHOOSH right into the big angry room full of sad people being yelled at. But that lady was nice.”
”So,” Robin straightened a weightless wrinkle in her coat, “let me get this straight. Technically, you’re dead?”
Manner of speaking. Do you have grounding in basic biology and thaumic theory?
“Wizard Jelly says if you have grounds in biowhatevers and thaumthingies.”
“I’m sorry?”
ugh
“Biiiiiolooogiessss,” Anila stretched out the word, and pouted. But only for a second.
“Oh! Yes. I have a doctorate in Arcane Sciences. My thesis was in,” she paused, “bodies.”
Excellent. Well, consider that I am not precisely, for the exact definition of the word, a symbiote; Anila is in many ways physically dead. I am simply maintaining her body, but in the process I must consume an increasing proportion of it.
“Wizard Jelly’s eating me.”
Seeing Robin blanch, Anila hurriedly continued, “But that’s okay! Because that means I get to stay alive!”
The necrologist scribbled a note onto a scrap of paper. “Fascinating. I don’t know if your magical theories correspond to mine, but… so your ‘Wizard Jelly’ is consuming you in exchange for life?”
“Mhm.”
“I wonder,” she mused, “if death, by being consumed, on a microscopic scale… is what creates and sustains the wizgel?”
...wizgel?
“Wizard Jelly’s not a big fan of ‘wizgel’.”
---
Their conversation cut short as a loud hissing noise sliced through the air: a hatch on the far end of the dormitory-room was easing open, taking an inrush of escaping air along with it. With lightning speed, a familiar hand shot out and hung on to a hole, pulling the rest of an equally familiar white-orange and metal carapace out from the maelstrom.
“Rachel!” Anila leapt for her old war buddy, and ineffectually attempted to swim over in zero gravity. She only started making progress when a stray air current caught her, dragging her towards the hard vacuum beyond the hatch. “I know this one, Robiiiiin,” she yelled as she soared past the necrologist.
aaaaaaaaaaaa
“Also Wizard Jelly is screaaaming now -- oof!”
Anila slammed bodily into the hatch just as Rachel managed to pull her legs through the opening, shutting it neatly; all was silent for a moment as everyone involved attempted to do a roll call of their limbs and injuries.
Robin kicked off a wall-hole neatly and came to rest near the other two. (Aha, she thought, and mentally checked the last name off her checklist) “So are you dead too, then?”
Metal-ensconced hands patted the rest of the organic body down. “I don’t think I can die.”
“Well, you’d be surprised.” She made a joke to keep the excitement from rising into her voice. “It gets easier after the first few times around, so the ghosts keep telling me.”
Rachel flinched. “There are ghosts?”
“Well, uh - not right now. I can probably find one-”
Shudder. “I listened to the sounds of the screaming dead.” Blanch. “You could see everything from up there.” Wince. “Oh god, Sonora.”
She tried to turn to face Anila, but ended up spinning in place. “Anila! Anila, did you see Sonora? Before it all went to shit? Or -” No, it was Chaete who had died - “No, it’s - it’s still alive - “
Robin reached out and steadied the spinning sun. “I didn’t see Sonora in the Valley. What is it?”
“Horrifying. It -”
“It was awesome! It was all ‘i like to siiiiing’ and then it ate one of the guys and then it spat his teeth at my other buddy Frosty! I wonder where he is?”
“It…ate a guy?” Robin bewildered. “And spit out his teeth? While singing?”
“Look, it was godsdamned horrifying, all right? It - it destroys everything. It eats people and things and anybloodything, and then it fucking… it fucking learns their voices or something, and it sings with the voices of dead people.”
The necrologist’s ears pricked up. “So… we should probably find it, then?” she asked, completely innocently.
“Ugh. At this point I’d be happy to stay as far away from it as possible. But what else am I going to do?” Rachel sighed. “It seems to like me marginally more, at least. Maybe you won’t get killed instantly if I’m with you.”
“Anila?”
“ADVENTURE!”
bluh.
“Excellent. So it’s settled, then.”
“Bluh.” The three of them began navigating single file towards the dormitory-space exit, through a combination of handholds, kicks, and (in the case of Anila) flailing.
“...Is that a planet going around your head?”
In the frozen dust behind Her began a track of molten footprints, each one marked with a spray of metal vapor. In the vacuum, with no air to burn, Her eyes glowed blue-white. Her gaze threw sunburn at twenty meters, give you cancer easy at ten, kill you straight at five. Divine power blazed inside Her little sun, annihilation of antimatter to Her measly fusion, C4 to Her gunpowder, outright war to Her trade sanction; it fueled Her rage, and Her rage fueled it. She wanted things to burn, and She would have let loose on the ship about Her - if it were not for the fact that She would rather have unleashed it all on the Outsider. But no, that last visit lasted no time at all. A curling lick of orange plasma escaped from Her lips as She sighed into the vacuum. The Outsider had taken it all away, just as it was getting good.
She shook herself. Good? Being an omnipotent homicidal maniac was supposed to be good? She recognized, on a fundamental level, that divinity did not suit her. It scared the electrons off of her atoms - raw power, unbound by any fundamental principles or physical laws? Of such things are Outsiders made of. Perhaps. Hold on to it too long, and it would destroy her.
But maybe there was something she could do.
Rachel took a deep, unnecessary breath of absolutely nothing at all, and exhaled something that was not air into the corridor. When she was done, and it had all coalesced into a tiny floating orb of blue, she sagged and contrived to look slightly less immortal. A fair few impatient moments had to pass before she began to walk, and then bounce, and then float towards the innards of the ship, the blue marble orbiting her head.
Sometimes gods have to walk among mortals for a little bit. Plus, all that divine power was beginning to chafe.
---
“...and so, I went and took this map the nice lady gave me and I used it on doors that went ‘KA-CHUMPH’ a lot!” Anila illustrated with a downward swipe of her blue-tinged hand, sending her somersaulting across the weightless chamber. “Then I stuck it in this slot, and it nearly blew off my hand, but Wizard Jelly helped me out!”
sigh
“Then we went driving! It was the funnest thing ever, unless you count the other time I went driving in a tank and went WHOOSH right into the big angry room full of sad people being yelled at. But that lady was nice.”
”So,” Robin straightened a weightless wrinkle in her coat, “let me get this straight. Technically, you’re dead?”
Manner of speaking. Do you have grounding in basic biology and thaumic theory?
“Wizard Jelly says if you have grounds in biowhatevers and thaumthingies.”
“I’m sorry?”
ugh
“Biiiiiolooogiessss,” Anila stretched out the word, and pouted. But only for a second.
“Oh! Yes. I have a doctorate in Arcane Sciences. My thesis was in,” she paused, “bodies.”
Excellent. Well, consider that I am not precisely, for the exact definition of the word, a symbiote; Anila is in many ways physically dead. I am simply maintaining her body, but in the process I must consume an increasing proportion of it.
“Wizard Jelly’s eating me.”
Seeing Robin blanch, Anila hurriedly continued, “But that’s okay! Because that means I get to stay alive!”
The necrologist scribbled a note onto a scrap of paper. “Fascinating. I don’t know if your magical theories correspond to mine, but… so your ‘Wizard Jelly’ is consuming you in exchange for life?”
“Mhm.”
“I wonder,” she mused, “if death, by being consumed, on a microscopic scale… is what creates and sustains the wizgel?”
...wizgel?
“Wizard Jelly’s not a big fan of ‘wizgel’.”
---
Their conversation cut short as a loud hissing noise sliced through the air: a hatch on the far end of the dormitory-room was easing open, taking an inrush of escaping air along with it. With lightning speed, a familiar hand shot out and hung on to a hole, pulling the rest of an equally familiar white-orange and metal carapace out from the maelstrom.
“Rachel!” Anila leapt for her old war buddy, and ineffectually attempted to swim over in zero gravity. She only started making progress when a stray air current caught her, dragging her towards the hard vacuum beyond the hatch. “I know this one, Robiiiiin,” she yelled as she soared past the necrologist.
aaaaaaaaaaaa
“Also Wizard Jelly is screaaaming now -- oof!”
Anila slammed bodily into the hatch just as Rachel managed to pull her legs through the opening, shutting it neatly; all was silent for a moment as everyone involved attempted to do a roll call of their limbs and injuries.
Robin kicked off a wall-hole neatly and came to rest near the other two. (Aha, she thought, and mentally checked the last name off her checklist) “So are you dead too, then?”
Metal-ensconced hands patted the rest of the organic body down. “I don’t think I can die.”
“Well, you’d be surprised.” She made a joke to keep the excitement from rising into her voice. “It gets easier after the first few times around, so the ghosts keep telling me.”
Rachel flinched. “There are ghosts?”
“Well, uh - not right now. I can probably find one-”
Shudder. “I listened to the sounds of the screaming dead.” Blanch. “You could see everything from up there.” Wince. “Oh god, Sonora.”
She tried to turn to face Anila, but ended up spinning in place. “Anila! Anila, did you see Sonora? Before it all went to shit? Or -” No, it was Chaete who had died - “No, it’s - it’s still alive - “
Robin reached out and steadied the spinning sun. “I didn’t see Sonora in the Valley. What is it?”
“Horrifying. It -”
“It was awesome! It was all ‘i like to siiiiing’ and then it ate one of the guys and then it spat his teeth at my other buddy Frosty! I wonder where he is?”
“It…ate a guy?” Robin bewildered. “And spit out his teeth? While singing?”
“Look, it was godsdamned horrifying, all right? It - it destroys everything. It eats people and things and anybloodything, and then it fucking… it fucking learns their voices or something, and it sings with the voices of dead people.”
The necrologist’s ears pricked up. “So… we should probably find it, then?” she asked, completely innocently.
“Ugh. At this point I’d be happy to stay as far away from it as possible. But what else am I going to do?” Rachel sighed. “It seems to like me marginally more, at least. Maybe you won’t get killed instantly if I’m with you.”
“Anila?”
“ADVENTURE!”
bluh.
“Excellent. So it’s settled, then.”
“Bluh.” The three of them began navigating single file towards the dormitory-space exit, through a combination of handholds, kicks, and (in the case of Anila) flailing.
“...Is that a planet going around your head?”
----
So very British / But then again | People are machines Machines are people | Oh hai there | There's no time
----
Superhero 1920s noir | Multigenre Half-Life | Changing the future | Command line interface
Tu ventire felix? | Clockwork for eternity | Explosions in spacetime