Nobody's Memories [KH SI/Multicross]

[Solsticegelan]

Originally posted on Spacebattles
Updates Bidaily!
ORIGINS OF THIS THREAD-
*Quickly running after a wagon, in which @Drich sits at the reigns*
"Hey! Wait up!"
* @Drich is miles away*
"WAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-"
*Runs into an eldritch castle*
@Stewart92 : "Hello!"

Summary: The universe conspires against me, and a series of omnipotent beings that govern our universe seem to each try to outdo each other in a content of who can make the most go wrong in my life. One of them says 'Screw you!' and launches me into my death, and my new life - as a Nobody. Joy.

Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - R.O.B is a Dick, and Murphy is just doing his job
Chapter 2 - The Lanes Between
Chapter 3 - Though perhaps Murphy takes a bit too much pleasure in his work
Chapter 4 - A Rather One-sided fight to the Death
Chapter 5 - It had to be unwashed, uneducated Peasants in a Deathworld
Chapter 6 - Step one; Kill bandits.Step Two, ???. Step Three; Profit.
Interlude - Geralt of Rivia
Chapter 7 - Taking Stock & Exposition
Chapter 8 - How to entertain yourself while waiting for Idiots, Vol.1
Chapter 9 - Consideration
Chapter 10 - Reconsideration
Chapter 11 - It isn't a dastardly plot!
Chapter 12 - "All as plan- Damnit!"
Chapter 13 - Butcher of Blaviken
Chapter 14 - Living up to other's expectations
Chapter 15 - Horses; Dicks or Trolls?
Chapter 16 - Stalking
Chapter 17 - Being Stalked
Chapter 18 - "WHY AM I THE BAIT?!"
Chapter 19 - On the road once more
Chapter 20 - A boring yet exciting timeskip
Chapter 21 - The Bloody Baron
Chapter 22 - Meeting the Crones, with Caution

 

[Solsticegelan]

Nobody's Memoryies
Chapter 1 - R.O.B is a Dick, and Murphy is just doing his job​

Y'know, looking back at this, I would laugh at the circumstances that had lead me to this point.

I would also curse ROB while kicking him in the balls.

I would also curse Murphy, and by extension, Imhotep. Oh good, I still remember Spacebattles!

Now then, every SI's obligation to curse ROB put to the side, where does my 'situation' start? Oh,let's see… I'd say it all started with me walking down the street to return the copy of the second Kingdom Hearts game to a friend, phone in hand, about to read through the madness that had at one point come to represent the vast majority of my social life. As all Spacebattlers in my situation inevitably do, I had read a comment that made me laugh, and after one long, convoluted series of thoughts, I decided I would tempt murphy for no apparent reason on an average day.

"He's right; what could possibly go wrong?" I had said aloud, still laughing, and drawing the ire of a nearby man walking his dog. I had even thrown in particular inflections

Ok, he shot me an angry look.

….A concerned look with a bit of anger is still an angry look. Ok, I'm not the best at reading human emotions, alright? Especially considering my circumstances.

See, this is the part where things had gotten interesting. The particular comment I was laughing at isn't important; even I don't remember it; my own comment? I know what you're wondering. Well, the way I figure it, I might have just tripped over a rock and scraped my knee, which then somehow contracted the bubonic plague, all for tempting Murphy; but the comment I had read was one of Imhotep's, and the way I figure it, she intercepted my temptations, and personally passed them along to Murphy; and unfortunately for me, Murphy's Murphy had placed Murphy on a phone call with his good friend R.O.B. at the time.

Now, normally this would be the part where I, the unfortunate victim, tripped and contracted an ancient plague that I'm vulnerable to through a random mutation received last week after drinking slightly rotten milk. But Imhotep had been talking too loudly ,you see, and R.O.B had heard her through Murphy's shushing, and taken a personal interest in me, the random spacebattler who also happen to post on SV from time to time. They had then forgotten about their old conversation ,and through an elaborate flowchart and several powerpoints, had come up with the most deliciously heinous way to prove me wrong. It was a glorious flow,chart, too; spanned several worlds, 4 dimensional, written in an eldritch language we cannot hope to understand just to fuck with us… the powerpoints, near as I can figure, were just really good powerpoints. R.O.B and Murphy were just really good businessmen. They had created a truly epic, awe-inspiring plan for how to ruin my life for the rest of my pitiful, short existence that I would only have to be in awe of.

Now, near as I know, Imhotep's Imhotep had been watching, and told Murphy's Murphy everything was going perfectly fine, and that he didn't need to interfere. Unfortunately for me, Murphy's Murphy had also been on a phone at the time, talking to the R.O.B to end all R.O.B's, who proceeded to atomically disintegrate R.O.B and Murphy's plans, and proceed to kick over and stomp upon every tenuous force that dared to balance the universe's face. Well, how do I know this? The answer is simple.

As I walked down the street, I bumped into a man, dropping my phone and the game. We both bent down, profusely apologizing, me grabbing my phone and him grabbing the game…. When I looked him in the face. Perfectly normal, you see, the kind of person who you could call roguish as easily as you could plain. Then I looked him in the eyes, apologies dying, as I dropped my phone again.

"Mother fu-"

So… deep. So...blue. Ancient beyond measure, to a degree where any words I used to describe them would be meaningless. Even just remembering them, I… shudder. Meaning faded from them. I could scarcely register his amused grin, his laughter, or what he said to me. I couldn't imagine looking away, but managed to for a single moment, a frantic,a useless gesture to get two doses of confirmation as to my situation; I managed to look at his waist for a single second; nothing. No weapon. Our gazes met once again, and I lost into an eternity so deep even the Eldritch would

Well , they were locked until a Woman's hands grabbed me from behind, laughing wildly, and I heard her shout something as I snapped out of my revery and was tossed - an Overhead toss, mind you, not shoved - through the air, her excited call echoing after me.

"Turns out this counts as an ASH world!"

The voice followed me, chiming and echoing throughout ...well,everything, even as I burst into flames and vanished from the world, bursting through who-knows-how-many dimensional barriers, multiverses, and franchises before finally slowing, sliding through one dimensional barrier with a texture like wet tissue paper, bending around my form as it slowed it, its consistency reminding me of gello mixed with playdough.Though I did not realize it, as I slowed and was dropped through the barrier and punching through it like my idle thumb through plastic wrap, that I was currently staring the lanes between down. Not that I could see, mind you, especially not considering both where I was and my blind panic.

Ah, my last true burst of panic… I shall remember it, and cherish it if I could. I'll have to settle for the alternative.

Now, this would be when I started to fall through the sky, somehow still alive even though I was burning up, probably visible as a shooting star to the people of that world, clothes already burned away, body slightly charred, pain overridden by sheer adrenaline and force of will…. Maybe a bit of disbelief, but you know.

So many emotions…. Y'know, that's something I feel -HA!- I'm going to be doing a lot more now. Emphasizing certain words…. Ah well, no use dwelling on something I can't have,

Of course, staring down my imminent death was a bit of an… what's the word? Epiphany works. I didn't give some random god a prayer, I didn't mourn for the loss of what I could've done for the world, I only feared for my life for a single pant-wetting moment…. No, I accepted it. There was nothing I could've said, nothing I could've done; I had, for a single moment, given in to every depressing thought of how worthless I was in the grand scheme of things.

Especially after looking at those eyes. I'm not even capable of it now, but they somehow still send shivers up my spine.

So, I was content, even for a single moment. Then my thoughts were interrupted by my face crashing through a rock, and mind-numbing pain overtook everything in a string of rampant cursing, even though my mouth was bloody. It was… well, interesting now, horrific then. Every bone broken, stuck between rock, soft dirt, and grass… more blood lost than I could probably fit in my fifteen year old body. I wonder now why I didn't immediately die, especially considering I landed head first. My best explanation thus far has been R.O.B fuckery.

It was about then, amidst my thrashing and screaming in agony, that I realized exactly here I was. The rock I had smashed my head into was a chimney; the many grassy hills homes bearing windows and doors. I could see paths made for smaller people, and the roar in the back of my mind was fading to reveal panicked voices.

With a laugh, I realized where I was there and then, when a small man with a head of curly brown hair and hairy bare feet ran out of his house, confused and scared. I hadn't been that loud, had I? I had thought.

Then I remembered the sonic boom.

So I kept on laughing, because I recognized where I was. I recognized the Shire, the burrow, the Hobbits… Hell, that was Bilbo, Bilbo's house, Bilbo's chimney….It looked just like the movie!

The disappointment that it hadn't looked like I had imagined faded fast, replaced by...joy. Contentment. I got to see the world made by Tolkien, a place that had inspired so many stories, brought me joy, even helped inspire me at times… a place so generic yet amazing, the entire Fantasy genre was permeated by it, whether or not you knew it.

What a wonderful place to die! Would I be buried in an unmarked tomb? Would they send my corpse to the nearest humans first chance they got, presumably once Gandalf came round? Is this before or after the Hobbit? Might Bilbo personally take my body elsewhere? No, he was far too tame for the plot to have started yet, judging by his blubbering. Oh, he was blubbering! Wonderful! What wonderful butterfly's I might cause! How long would they talk about the naked human who fell from the sky, only to crash into some innocent hobbits home? More than long enough for all the details to get warped and distorted, I'd imagine; they were hobbits, after all. Gossip ran deeper in their blood than procrastination did in me. What might the tale become a decade from now, a century? Would it die or thrive before then?

Oh, I did not know, but how wonderful a place to die! I had laughed again, there and then, slightly delirious and lost in my thoughts. So many emotions, so much care and excitement and a dozen other things bubbling through my mind… oh, nostalgia, how I 'wish' I could feel even you.

Those feelings all came crashing down soon after, before a crowd could even form, before the hobbits could even form; with a single noise. My last feeling of dread, but final and opposite of least feeling of fear.

Bworp?

A shadow, welling up from thin air as though there were a crack in the worlds. There very might well have been, considering my method of entry. A crack in the World's barrier.

Bworp!

Two glowing yellow eyes, shining from a cartoonishly large head atop a small body with long,twisted feelers popped out of the air,more slowly following after it apearing out of thin air like the were wriggling out of a crack, curiously circling me. My heart had stopped, by mind had slowed; The Heartless.

I had just burst through this world's barrier. The heartless had just appeared as though they had wormed their way through a crack in the sky.

A foregone conclusion, but beside the then much closer point

Heartless. Shadows. Weakest of all heartless, and so desperately far out of my league it wasn't even funny. I was lying here, bleeding to death, and I had just lead the heartless to a feast of pure-hearted souls via interdimensional solar flare. One heartless was a problem, one I might - might- stop by sacrificing myself to dissuade it from coming here. I had forgone reading the lore to power through the series first, but I still knew only a keyblade could permanently end them, but that enough deaths could dissuade them. A scarce, dreadful hope.

The still growing half-dozen heartless looking at me, still making noises that were far too cute to belong to World-ending shadow demon zombies?

Not a hope. Oh, the determination, so rich! I'll always remember it.

My final thoughts as I charged at them, shambling as I went, body in disrepair? As much as I would like to say 'Fuck you, R.O.B, it was closer to 'oh god oh god oh god why me."

Anyone who asks me about how I died from now on will hear the tale of my heroic charge, taking them all out before a Darkside showed up.

So then, there I was, the Shadow jumping back from my feeble punch, the others slowly circling me now. One leaped from behind me, making the wind rustle, giving me scarcely a moment to even register it had moved, when its claw pierced by chest, not one drop of blood on them.

I felt it tear out my heart, tear it out, oh so much pain and ever-mounting fear… but I did not want to die, fought and struggled, even managed to temporarily disperse one for but a moment, did not want to go silently into the night, -didn't want my goddamned last thoughts to be a goddamned shitty movie refer-

Nothing.

And then, I awoke here. Dressed in a cloak the same Silvery-white as the shade making up most of Castle Oblivion,made in the guise of the Robes of Organization Thirteen. Sitting upon a floating rock in the middle of the lanes between, a large chunk amongst rubble, sitting amongst endless stars, all as a vast infinite darkness that whispered, tempted me with promises of power, echoing againts every corner of my mind…

Or so it should have been. Instead, I felt nothing, nothing but a deep coldness deep within my chest. Not one whiff of panic, not one hint of anger, or regret, but certainly confusion. Not the emotional kind, the one you would receive when baffled; the kind one would get when attempting to figure out what way a Rubik's cube should twist or turn to get to the next combination. A cold, logical confusion. The negative emotions weren't all that I had taken note was absent. The beauty of what I stared at, all the colors, the auroras, the countless worlds… did nothing. Not one hint of excitement at what I wore, no squee of fanboyism in relation to what I wore. Only the most minor of notation of the quality of the robe, an admission to how fine the quality,a minor thought track dedicated to ramblings on its craftsmanship that I quickly silenced because they weren't getting me anywhere.

I found it quite clear what had happened to me, what with the soul-crushing vast void, cold and empty, aching and beating without rhythm as it called for something.

I was a Nobody.

I had been slain by the Heartless; it was quite clear-cut, honestly. Whenever the Heartless killed someone, their heart was taken, terrible things I was quite sure of occurring to it, darkness overwhelming it and converting it into a heartless. Normally, heart taken, the body would shrivel up, mind and soul lost; but when someone with a strong will, a strong desire to survive, a strong enough soul? Their bodies would keep on going, regardless of what anyone else said should have happened. Normal nobody's would still shrivel up, yet change and squirm as they took on new, warped shapes that bore no mind to normal geometries. They were thinking, intelligent creatures, always with some goal in mind, seeking to regain what was lost. Yet they could not remember what they once had.

Humanoid Nobodies, though? An entirely different story. They…. We remember our pasts, our history; we are emotionless and thinking, able to draw upon powers I had no real explanation as to why or how they manifested themselves. Well, according to my abysmal understanding of Nobody lore. It should have made the pain of lacking them greater - yet it didnt, couldnt, because we could not feel.

Didn't stop the fading splintering cold in my chest from growing greater. It's…. Hard to explain, really. I didn't have to, nor want to, do anything, because I couldn't. Although I wanted to get back a heart, it was… more an impulse, pure bodily instinct that was tempting me on. A need more than a want, although I had no true needs anymore. Unless motivated, I would not move until the day I faded away to nothing, my body returned to the darkness.

Provided Xemnas had not lied to the Organization - a possibility I wouldn't discount without readily bountiful evidence.

Dude was a bastardous prick, and I both couldn't feel emotion nor state I knew his full backstory.

All of that? It should have made me angry, saddened, depressed - yet it didn't, for it couldn't. I've been throwing those words around a lot, haven't I? Need, want, couldnt, wouldnt. It provides my muse with something interesting, gives me something to be curious about, stop myself from simply sitting there forever without one thought in my mind. There's a thought as well - I describe what I do as curiosity, when it cannot be curiosity. It lead to think of the other organization members, at the time; of how they could not feel nothing, of how they felt no remorse for their actions, how they could commit atrocities in the name of regaining that which would make them understand exactly what they had done. Ironic, wasnt it?

It should've triggered a fear, that I would become like them. I could try to tell myself that I wouldnt, that I refused to compromise my Morals, that I still had them. But did I? The Million dollar question. Would I care if I ended one life? Ten? Twenty? A Hundred? Would I flinch at the destruction of a world? I should've been in a panic ,and the realization that I wasn't one should have triggered fear or panic, and the fact that I couldnt should have caused something didn't, yet I still tried to calm and reason with myself, although I did not need to, for I felt nothing in the first place. This, is turn, triggered a curiosity, a wondering of what might be and so forth and so on for who knows how long.

I need to stabilize myself, I would say. Yet there was nothing to stabilize, no anger or frustration or fear or sickening feeling within my gut to tell me what was right or wrong, even if morally I knew it was something I would not do. Yet no objections would be raised.

On and on that thought process could go, would go. How deep down the rabbit hole of falsities and half-thought emotions would I sink? It would amuse me, if i could feel amusement.

There goes that thought process again - registering an emotion that isn't there. On and on it will go, but on and on I will not bore you with my ramblings. Now, you might have noticed I seem to be perfectly capable of display emotion. After all, how many times in this little journal that found my, floating across the void, have I written a joke, some sarcastic remark? Quite simple, really. I remembered me.

The Nobodies of Organization 13, when they did not sound oddly sexy or have less emotion or tone in their voice than some robots I could name, would often pretend to have emotions. A method to soothe the ache that our hearts had left behind; to pretend was to act, to act as to be. In life I was, of course, scathingly sarcastic and loved to joke around, when I was not busy procrastinating, writing, or simply avoiding most of my asshole peers. It… did nothing to soothe the ache, which I tried to shove to the back of my mind. But I could act, and it was as I wanted.

Oh,there's that word again! Want. Want, want want. What do I truly want? What do I truly need? Could I even help? A nobody could fight the heartless, certainly, but he could not kill them. Could not lock a person's heart, seal a world's heart and hide away the flame that would draw them to the world until it was snuffed out. Questions I might ask if I could bring myself to care.

Hm,seems I don't need to pretend to procrastinate.

No,the question I truly need to be asking myself isn't what I want, or what I Need; It was what I needed to make happen. Im sure you might know the situation; I, with nearly omnipotent meta knowledge, and now several powers placing me firmly above most foes I would face, would go around fixing everything. Perhaps, if I wanted evidence my morals were intact, would act upon this evidence.. If i didn't want to be disgusted with myself, for not figuring out what was wrong.

How many times am I going to bring up want? It's an enigma. I don't know what to do,and that's the ultimate decision-making factor here. The thing I needed… it was answers

That would decide everything.

So, here I am, scribbling away all the philosophies my little 15 year-old mind now free of hormonal imbalances can wrap its mind around, trying to solve an Existential crisis he truly isn't experiencing. I figured I would simply start writing in this journal, using the pen attached to it, and figure out what I should do. It's… an oddly blockish journal too, enough to give me a moment's pause. What world had it come from? The point for the time being, however, is what I'm doing here - writing out my own entries in this otherwise empty book. Create my own secret reports, as it was. Like either of the Ansem's Secret Reports, either the original or the other's ,though what you defined as which depended on perspective and how long you wanted to spend thinking out a pseudo paradox riddle.

...I had spent too much time on that, rather than caring for the accuracy or consistency of what I write in here. Mostly because, once again, I can't.

There were two problems here, problems I haven't managed to think of. I remember my name, certainly; and while given time to not be unsympathetically lazy in relation to coming up with a way to add in a X into my full, long, long name, it wouldnt exactly work. It would be painful enough to make even me wince. I could certainly use the name I take online, but… the multiverse exists. I didn't want to bring down the wrath of a planet busting angel, who almost certainly existed. Yet still, I needed a name, and I had nothing else suitable to the task. I would be forced to take it.

So then, need's and want's, impossible or otherwise and free of all emotion, aside, I need a name. Thusly, I have come up with one, one I shall use for all of tme.

I'm going to wince at the entirety of this report later,aren't I?

The second issue?

I may not be able to feel anything, but god damned was it boring out here. Apparently Boredom wasn't a true emotion, and I got stir crazy enough that I essentially leapt at this journal. My constant entertainment, regardless of its similarities to the real thing, needed to be sated.

I'll probably leave a more… shortened, version of this behind here,on this rock. I don't know why; a trail? Evidence I was here? A Fancy of my whim? It doesn't matter for the time.

Solstice Gelan,
Journal Entry 0​

-0-0-0-​

Placing the pen back into the metallic rings of the journal, I sigh, looking out at the darkness; countless stars, countless worlds, glowed back. The light should have been calling to me, yet it did not. I had a feeling I needed to focus on that type of thing less, and I probably would, but for the time… nothing would change.

A light, shining oh so brightly close by, began to flicker, before it vanished as if snuffed out like a firefly grasped in a mans palm. I felt nothing, even as I realized exactly what that had meant. There was only one reason a star would be snuffed out so close to where I had died and been reborn, one world which the Heartless had been recently been let into.

Pulling my legs up from the sides of the squared rock chunk, I stretched ; pointless, but human. I had admitted to myself I couldn't let myself become like some of Organization 13's members, and… everything helped.

Looking around, I simply had to decide where to start. Looking closely, I could sense… life, burning in vast and varying quantities within the worlds as well. The light, the darkness… I could sense it's the balance each world possessed as well, and where. Something to test later. I could even sense the Corridor's of Darkness, their winding pathways an open book that could not tempt me.

Tossed aside and forgotten by both Light and Dark indeed.

I also needed to figure out if weapons wielded by Organization members were a part of them, or made by some Nobody scientist. More than that, my power's. Going undefended into the worlds was… a bad idea.

Testing my strength, I jumped up, towards a piece of squared green rock barely large enough for me to stand on; I landed on it, upside down.

Fuck you too physics.

It afforded me a better vantage point, a better idea of where I should go. Right now? The world almost entirely swallowed by darkness, crying out even across vast distances, sounded like a good place to start.​

 

[Solsticegelan]

Nobody's Memory's
Chapter 2 – The Lanes Between​

First manner of business now that I had finished writing in my journal, in a long, rambly way that probably meant I had lost track of all time; find out where I was, and more importantly, when I was. I had no real goal ,no real motivation. My humanity was something I was trying to grasp on drawstrings to retain, my personality – even in my thoughts – faintly emotional, and even then its faked. Nothing clicks, nothing registers; I had tried speaking, without putting conscious forefront into it, and my voice had come out tone-deaf, not one inflection placed into it beyond habit and accent.


Oh yes, I could hear my own accent now. I'm from southern jersey, and can hear every twang, pop, drawn out syllable, and vowel pronounced as another. That wasn't annoying. Well, it wasn't, but it should be, and – no, bad Solstice, no more rambling while questing. I had to set up goals, and I had to figure out what to do so I wouldn't end up sitting around for an eternity. Looking back and forth, I decided to not open a corridor of darkness, mentally mapping out hopefully clear paths to hop across and get close enough to a world that I could access it. Not because of time constraints, or some unforeseen difficulties; no, to stave off my goddamned boredom.

So.Boring.

Really, of all the things that had to still afflict me, boredom? I seriously hoped this was an ailment shared with all other Human-Nobody's, otherwise I would kick whichever divine entity or force of nature was responsible for this in the nuts with all my…. Considerable? Force.

The conclusions to be made from these observations? The Organization XIII member's strengths didn't wildly fluctuate and instead could be chalked up to difficulty spikes and scaling within the game itself –possible, just to make things more difficult than they should be on my part- or there really was that much of a power difference that presumably couldn't be overcome save for through trickery and subterfuge between the Organization members, with Nobody's being created unequal to one another.

Hopping towards a large, flat altogether plat-like rock, I grabbed a pebble that had been floating nearby; aiming carefully for a far-off chunk of rock a normal human's eye couldn't have hoepd to see, I aimed, carefully lining it up between my fingers….

*Flick!*
*Kr-krack-boom!*

….that was surprisingly satisfying, actually. There were far too many gratuitious noises compacted into that one rock exploding into rubble all because I had thrown a pebble into it. Withdrawing the journal from the hidden, large pocket within the hem of my robe, I flipped it open, taking a moment to appreciate my pen. It was a nice, ballpoint pen, unadorned with any random company's advertisements, glass, or copyright claims of all things; and thus far it had shown itself magic. I could erase whatever I had written by running the cap along the text; though I had nothing to test whether it was the pen or book itself that was enchanted. My cloak outright couldn't be written on by it, my skin outright rejected the ballpoints tip, and there was nothing but

The point being, it was an excellent, excellent pen.

My pen.

Flipping the journal open to a section with a flap sticking out – such a useful journal ,too -, I Idly reread what I had written thus far. My goals? What I knew? Powers? Recorded here.
*scribble scribble scritch scratch*
It had an absolutely amazing tip, too. Felt so natural.

Powerset thus Far​

• Exhibited strength beyond normal humans; able to jump several dozen to hundreds of feet with little to no effort. Effects proof of absurd strength, or of lack of Gravity?
  • Able to throw pebble far and hard enough to pulverize a far larger stone. Estimated distance; 1km?
  • All Nobody's displayed ridiculous amounts of durability to high-end RPG characters; assume I'm super-resistant to most things, but not all. We aren't immortal like Heartless; any weapon can put us down.

• Physics; No fucks given. Center of Gravity appears to be whatever and however I define it. Natural, or due Lanes Between?
• Pathways to the Darkness; I can feel them, the paths connecting all the worlds together with the darkness, that allows me near-instant travel to essentially anywhere we want. Test showed opening and closing of portals to be instinctual; locations need to have been visited or seen before? Unknown.
• Eyesight is disturbingly good, able to pick out safe paths in great detail to get closer to worlds with ease despite taking several minutes to reach them
  • Vision remains constant in both extreme light and dark?
• Able to sense life, and the Light and Darkness within peoples worlds.
  • Closer examination can reveal the balance, as well as intensity, of each respective force.

Knowledge​

• Aranel is my R.O.B?
• Middle-Earth was consumed by the Darkness
  • Possible Keyhole locations; Saurons Tower in Mordor, The place Sauron had the ring severed, Lonely Mountain, all the vague places from the Similarion.
  • Was snuffed out shortly after awakening; keyhole in shire? Or was I unconcious for longer than I am aware of?

Goals​

• Entertain myself, goddamnit.
• Figure out when I am
• Figure out where I am
• Investigate the World shrouded in Darkness which yet shines.
• Figure out why there's so much Rubble around these worlds. Actually, we might want to prioritize this one.
  • Monstro came through?
• Regain heart?

Slamming the journal shut with a loud boom as it vanished back within the folds of my cloak, I nodded, a simple action meant once more to fill the time I spent here with. I had the distinct feeling that would be a recurring problem here, but regardless, entertainment and possible answers laid ahead, at the world you currently sought to enter was close. What an interesting world it was, too.

​

A single look at it hadn't revealed anything wrong at first; a misshapen world at second glance, perhaps, its star blotting out all signs of its deformities. A matter to investigate another time. But then? Then I had looked closer, in a way only I could. There was no tenuous balance being retained, nor a struggle by one side to overcome the next; Darkness overflowed throughout all the world, snuffing out and dowsing all the light I could find. Yet still the star shined on, bright as any other cared to. Was it a world overrun by heartless, unable to find the world's keyhole, its survivors putting up apparently commendable efforts to survive? There were few other explanations you could find at the moment, and none of them satisfied you. The fact that this worlds barrier, for reasons you couldn't currently understand failed to glimmer constantly, as though exposed to sunlight like others close enough for you to see had shown themselves to.

It was concerning, but not too much. Your current thought track went something along the lines of this; it was an anomaly, and you were a nearby SI. A R.O.B wants to be entertained, almost as much as you did. Odds were he had placed or altered this world specifically for you; and annoying a R.O.B was a bad idea. Even if that wast the case, you would look anyway; something about it seemed to scream and slap your sensibilities , as well as Kingdom Hearts lore, in the face.

I would laugh, if I had a sense of humor anymore; I acted like any sensibilities I still possessed could be offended.

If the threat of R.O.B-based 'encouragements' to visit this world wasn't enough to persuade me, what might be happening there was. Where heartless were created en-masse, so too would Nobodies be created; I wasn't entirely sure if they could be controlled, bartered, or persuaded with, but the chance to gain some loyal followers? So long as I found them, or could find a method of gaining their attention, Sign me up. Judging by how the world was consumed in darkness, yet no others did en-masse, I could assume this was before KHI, and therefore only had to worry about pureblood heartless, unless this was after the game, in which case.... nothing changed from my previous situation, really. Regardless, I could try to figure out my exact limits there, in addition to figuring out if I could control low-level Heartless, and how some of the Organization's members had done so in the first place.

Judging the jump from here to the final stone deemed sturdy enough to trust my weight upon, I leap, soaring for but a few seconds before landing solidly, graceful as a cat. I'm standing a scarce few feet from the world's barrier, now; it shines so brightly... yet it does not sing to me. I feel no loss. I do, however, feel like not taking a plunge out of the sky yet again, so I slowly back away, into the corridors of darkness which I had opened behind me, entering a long, echoing space made of darkness given sustenance and texture, all color muted an odd gray color. English texts cover the walls, as does a number of other languages I can... somehow understand and read. Huh.

*Scribble, Scribble*
*Snap!*

Interesting. For now, I turn, so that I may exit the corridors of darkness, exiting through the space I know to take me where I wish to go -

-and I cry out in true pain, rejected by the world itself. That made no sense. It.. I... thoughts racing, calm and collected, I know I would feel glad for my inability to feel emotion yet somehow register pain, which had caused to me cry out in surprise. Checking myself over, I find naught to be harmed; the sleeves of my cloak are singed, but nothing more. Everything is fine, even if I feel a bit ruffled up, and yet for no discernible reason the world had rejected me. The rejections origin was not visible from within the corridors; at least not via any methods of sight I had available to me.

There was no place for me to arrive, difficult to believe yet not impossible; I had yet to seen an entrance to the Corridors open without some kind of surface nearby.

Or something on the other side was rejecting me, shoving me aside. Now, here's the funny thing about me. I don't like rejection. Not one bit. Sure, sometimes it was understandable, or required in a relationship; sometimes rejection was unavoidable, and no one was better off. But random rejection? Well, normally it made me angry. Right now? Nothing but calm regards as I tried to figure out what had happened. My actions are rushed, now, as I think of a plan, acting upon it as steps formulate. Final conclusion?

I had no idea beyond what I had already said. It was in my best interest to simply mark this location down and visit it at later dates; which I did, exiting out of the corridors of darkness to observe notable landmarks in relation to this place, the few traits I had noted the star as having even from a distance - everything to help me find it again. I then turned, place my book back within my pockets fold, placed the silvery hood up over my face to realize.... huh, what do you know, the hoods actually kind of just comfortably hover over your head, like a pillow thats making sure its not disturbing your hair will keeping your face shrouded in shadow. I always wondered how the guys in Organization XIII could have such crazy hair and constantly wear hoods. That wasn't enough to distract me for the moment.

Leaning against the edge of the floating rubble I had entered the corridor from, I tense, taking a form similar to one of a swimmer about to dive into a pool. I had reached my final conclusion, one that might help me regain a bit of humanity, with minimum risk and maximum reward. There was only one thing to say as well.

"At sufficient Velocities."

Tightly gripping the edges of the rubble, now crumbling under my grip, I tense... push.... and release my grip, the platform getting quickly launched away from me while I sent myself flying forward at the barrier through a mixture of jumping and kicking the now eradicated platform. With a loud boom, I reach the barrier in under a second, my force attempting to pushing me through, as something reach out and shoves me away- deep into the void at speeds far faster than I could ever have hoped to accomplish,crashing through drifting stony debris, vision blurring as I continue to fall wildly...

My consciousness begins to slip as I realize I am, once more, falling out of the sky.​

 

[Solsticegelan]

Nobody's Memory's
Chapter 3 – Though perhaps Murphy takes a bit too much pleasure in his work​

Falling through the sky once again, eh Solstice? As fun as it may be, myself, we really must stop meeting like this, Sky. Oh, and my vast, cavernous skull? Please note I'm aware of your illicit affairs with the ground. I know you've been seeing him behind my back! Now I have to steady my body to descend in a cone, straightening myself out and going ramrod, creating a sonic cone around me as I fall. I test my connection to the Corridors of Darkness, to the Lanes Between, and find that surprise surprise, as a Nobody, my connections weren't strong enough to pull me through in an instant without creating a portal.

I suppose I would be getting a durability test soon enough. The fact that I had twice fallen onto hard, hard land from great heights probably meant something, what with Sora and Riku crashing harmlessly into the water by the end of the second game from great heights. I would ponder my luck compared to theirs if the pool of world-crashing-from-great heights wasn't both so small, and that they had been falling onto an mostly water world. I would be more than safe, especially considering how far and hard I had been launched away from that world, taking only superficial damage. I didn't even have an headache, though if that was because I had been hit hard enough or because of some unforeseen lack of anger or annoyance, I couldn't tell.

Now, back to the entirely far, far too curious world I had just been rejected from. I had felt something living, something Primordial in nature, that had rejected me unthinkingly the moment I had tried to force myself into it; that clearly meant something was in there, or had stumbled upon a particularly powerful keyblade master's demented testing grounds. Rather unfortunately, I could only name one darkness-obsessed keyblade master. Of course, it might not even have been him because granted, that was the worst case scenario I could experience. There were... alternatives.The presence... had been large. Large to the degree where making up words failed to describe it, and I had just barely glimpsed its heart before it had literally tossed me across and out of the galaxy. The thing puzzling me, however, was that it had possessed a heart. A large, large heart that might as well have been that worlds keyhole (wait, might it have been? A sentient keyhole?) but a heart nontheless.

That immediately discounted two of the largest players in Kingdom Heart's lore, and that was concerning, because I definitely didn't like unknown threats. What could it have been? The Unversed, maybe, though I had known nothing about them beyond taking a quick look at Birth by Sleep before I picked it up from my friend's. I had also, by perusing the Wikipedia page, heard of another pseudo-enemy race; the Dream Eaters. I, quite unfortunately, knew nothing about them because according to my aforementioned friend, the game they came from was 'stupid and convoluted as fuck.', and been recommended to never play it. The most I knew about the Dream Eaters was that they were Cosmic is nature, or something; certainly fit the bill better than what looked like pseudo-heartless experiments gone wild.

I was also willing to admit I had overestimated the strength of the world's barrier, and steadying myself so that I would hopefully land on my feet as I finally reached the ground-
*Krthunk!*
Ah,I had landed on my head again, dislodging my hood and literally eating dirt. Good to know this would be a recurring theme in my adventures to keep myself from being bored as fuck. Standing and dusting my cloak off, unnecessary in all honesty because there wants a hit of wear, tear, or ash upon them, I look around. Yet it felt human, and that was something I acknowledged as needing, even if I could bring myself to care to for a reason beyond occupying my thoughts. A bit of food for thought, how had I had so much time to think about everything despite falling from such great heights. Simple height? Accelerated thoughts? Ah well, who knew. Right now I needed to find out exactly where I was.

...I was inside of a smoking home, with a mutilated corpse clearly eaten to the bone by a wild animal, displaying many a bite and tear mark, the home itself possessing a giant gaping hole in its roof. Huh. When did this happen?

...Not just the murder. I had legitimately not been aware I had crashed through someones home, though it didn't look like he would be caring any time soon. Ah well, a whole new probably grimdark medieval world awaited me! What to do, what to do! Well, figure out what world I was in, or if I even recognized it for one...

Goals Quest Log!
Main Quest: Whole New World​

• Figure out what world I have landed in, and if it is identifiable
  • Find and fuck with the protagonist.
  • Find and fuck with any characters I once liked.
  • Gain their trust while doing so by solving their problems or dropping backstory hints, for butterfly's.
• Power testiiiiiing~!
• Find chump enemies or dungeon (?) to test strength on and discover whatever unique abilities I might possess

Well, what else was I going to call it? That was pretty much exactly what I had been using this journal for so far. No point calling this section something it wasn't.

Side Quest; Graverobber​

• We've found a Corpse in the home we certainly didn't destroy, chewed to the bone and stripped of all its flesh. Find out what it was for further power testing
  • Find out if the man had any valuables or insurance on his house we can capitalize upon/ steal.

Not having any real sense of guilt or regret was fun.

Now then *Snap!* How shall I go about this? There was a certain methodology that went with pillaging everything a man had owned in life. First, investigate. Cabinets, shelves above his bed in a room to the right and by the door, a bookshelf filled not with books but varying trinkets, burlap sacks probably filled with food, seeds, or some other bulk item, a few crates… surprisingly well-stocked for a guy I presumed to live in the middle of nowhere if I couldn't hear any screaming or curious whispers. Of course, everyone else might also be dead, slain by whatever it was that had gnawed this man to the bone, but y'know. Not to mention the fact that the dirty glass windows really didn't do the place, nor my currently lacking theories, any favors. Ignoring the fact the door was torn off its hinges to reveal a sunny day, the door itself laying in splinters just in front of the frame.

So then, priority targets, the chests. The trinkets could probably be pawned off if need be, so I could take them. The shelves had a few books, which I would use to find some kind of context to exactly where I was, or simply throw away. Food? Did I even need food? I'd neither felt nor seen any signs of needing sustenance, had craved nothing, and suffered no physical drawbacks thus far, so.... maybe not. I knew I could eat, yes, considering article A; Sea Salt Ice Cream, but I wouldn't enjoy it. Objectively, I knew why Roxas, Axel, and Xion had done so - to feel more human. To act, even in their thoughts, like they had emotion, to help ignore the lack of feeling, like I was now, even in my mind.

I now knew from experience that it didn't lessen the feeling. It certainly helped distract me from it.

There was also the fact that the majority of the people I had just mentioned had hearts.... maybe? Probably.

So then, what I had to do was boiled down to looting everything shiny, and skimming the pages of a few books. I should probably check out the corpse as well, see how long it had been here. Sniffing the air, there was only the mildest hint of rot and decay, hell, a candle was even burning over on a windowsill. So, that meant that the murder had both been recent if the house hadn't burnt down nor smell, and more importantly, that whatever had done it was still around. It also meant I had no weapon.... beyond my amazingly strong fists. So probably not a problem.

Moving for the first time since landing, I set about my business, pillaging the poor mans home of everything I can find; Golden coins hidden in bags and bins emboldened with the symbol of a crown, a surprisingly large and existent uncut emerald located at the bottom of a barrel full of potatoes, candle holders, silverware, a stone that had tingled with energy atop a shelf - they all disappeared into a messily dyed bright-blue bag I had 'commandeered', formerly also filled with potatoes, and herbs of some kind - a bright white flower with long petals, what might've been mistletoe, and leaves that reminded me of Parsley leaves my mother occasionally used as seasoning, were it not for vague differences that only a bored teenager who had chosen them as the topic of several hours recent sketching would care to notice. Overall? Mixed messages, especially once I had reached the books. One of them was a steamy vampire romance novel that name dropped absolutely nothing I could recognize, and another was a book of Herbs. It was either outdated or secondhand, too;yellowed pages and dogged edges, a chapped cover...It was certainly going into the newly christened lootbag, don't get me wrong, but still. Poorly kept books always had been something to grate on my nerves.

The fact that even one of my biggest triggers did nothing is what gave me pause. The one time I had ever come to blows with a kid had been when he had threatened one of my books in elementary school - I had literally sent him sprawling after he tried pouring water on it to get me off a swing. Expected, but yet I digress.

Finally checking out the last interesting thing in the dead man's bedroom - a chest under his bed which had contained yet more coins I gladly took and half-written love letters -, I rose up from my knees and kicked the chest back under the bed, silvery robes flowing at the movement. I had looted everything I could; time to go poking a pile of bones. I had been putting it off for long enough, what with my hour long noisy search of the already somewhat torn apart room; now it looked like a hurricane had come through.

Dropping the sack, I bent down over the bones and began to truly investigate them; leather and wool clothing, clearly worn and having seen better days, was torn to shreds save for the toughest, most sun-died sections, mostly pouches. Checking them revealed nothing but tools, amongst them a well-kept Knife, the likes of which I gladly claimed as my own. A few internal organs remained, mushy and eaten, in a much better condition than the rest of his bones, chewed until they looked as though they had the consistency of wet tissue paper or outright broken open and sucked dry of their marrow. I took note of his right hand's fingers, which he was clutching his left; shoving it aside revealed a bloody hunk of flesh remained. On his one particularly well-kept hand he wore a ring, completely plain and silver, yet clearly valuable to him.

Yoink.

It even looked like whatever had done this to him hadn't spared his head; his hair had been torn off in chunks, each eaten to the skin with tiny hints of meat remaining, covered in a greenish slime and slobber. An all around bleak, grim, and disturbing picture. I examined the ring, carefully and slowly turning it while clutching it between two fingers. In contrast to its rather plain sides and top, on its underside was an engraving that I actually couldn't read, despite being able to understand everything else I had found in the house and knowing it wasn't English. Interesting. Perhaps it had been enchanted? Sliding it onto my own finger, I decide its time to leave, taking one final look at the body.

I wondered if I would be able to introduce whatever had done this to the might of a Nobody.

Tying the bag up tightly, slinging it up and around my shoulder as I move to depart from the home, I sigh. Reaching the doors, I squinted in the sunlight, taking in a forested hillside, a dirt path stretching far and wide in front of the house; there were gardens on either side of the house as well. The sun rested high in the sky, looking as though it were ready to begin its descent. An otherwise nice day.Ah well, I suppose it had been too much to ask for anything interesting to happen. Taking one more step forward, I reacted amazingly well to the fact that two dead, fleshy corpses suddenly leapt at me from the treeline, snarling in an angry hunger.

Or, I thought, Slapping one aside and to the ground, stomping on its head and crushing its skull, I jumped back from the others claw-like grip , as my Sister's favorite pair of pajamas's would say; 'Hangry.' Throwing the sack behind me, I took a fighting stance, fists ready; lets see, remembering my somewhat pathetic lessons from years ago, slide one foot back like this, stay on my toes, circle the enemy...

The undead corpse, apparently taking a note from The Lifestealers book, was crawling across the floor, head facing me as it also cautiously circled around me: odd, aside from the obvious Lifestealer parrallels, why did this thing look so familiar to me? Eyeing the first one, its body twitching while its head remained firmly broken in and partially buried, made no movements to help its comrade.

The second stopped moving, looking as though it were about to tense before outright skipping that step and leaping at me. It was... pathetically slow, really. It appeared Enhanced Perception was to be added to my power list then. That'd certainly explain how I had gotten bored so fast...

An untrained punch lashed out, tearing through the monsters chest, stopping it in its tracks. It roared in pain, struggling to free itself from my arm, tearing and biting at my arm as I continued to hold it out, not at all put off by the squirming, rotten smelling undead corpse hanging off my arm.

A right tenacious little bastard he was, though.

Observing my arm, I was able to satisfactorily note that it couldn't even harm me, its scratches and bites failed to even force my cloak to bend, and my skin barely even noted the presence of the long, sharp, blackened claws it possessed.

"I suppose you've just answered a lot of my questions, haven't you?" I ask it, chuckling. " Care to help me answer one more?" I continue, grabbing its head and pulling it off my arm, holding it out and up. It dangled, feet dragging across the ground, as I took a stance memory demanded baseball pitchers took.

"How far can I throw a roughly human shaped creature, one weighing about the same as a human male, who I this far have not struggled to hold?" I finish, winding up my arm, tossing it as hard and far down the path as I could. Up it went, rising and rising...

...and rising...

...huh.

The answer is "Tean Rocket is blasting off again!". I could even see the diamond shaped twinkle in the distance. Well, I suppose I had been underestimating my strength.... in heaps and bounds. I should've been heading down the road, seeking out a village or something, but to be honest I was having a hard time processing exactly what had just happened.

Well, it looked like I could still sense peoples hearts... there were a few villages in each direction, the nearest a few hours walk. I tugged at the Corridors of Darkness, considering just teleporting over, but.... where would be the fun in that?

Setting off along the path to the nearest village, I looked closer with my senses; I could sense peoples hearts, yes, but not within a very large distance. Not to a degree that mattered. Everything last a certain point blurred together, indistinct and warped, images of Light and Darkness.

And oh so much darkness there was, too... A soul-crushing amount in most hearts I could sense, dulling life itself, the Light inside each heart not overwhelmed or defeated, simply.... resigned. And if I looked closely enough? In certain places, there were cracks nonsensically placed that I could look through, and if hard enough I looked, I could sense hearts... hearts located very, very far away. Gateways to other worlds, tenuous connections between the realms? A closed loop, I should imagine, considering this world wasn't overrun by heartless.

Sighing, I realized these thoughts weren't particularly result-wielding, and that they wouldn't be until I learned more.

Walking along, sun beating down upon me, I might've frowned if it meant something. It was slightly concerning, actually; I still had no idea what world I was on, and while i doubted anything here could truly threaten me unless it was overwhelmingly powerful or could pin me down for others to finish me off, it wouldn't be even noteworthy, not if those Lifestealer knock-off's had been any indication of what to expect here. I doubted they were very high end, and it wasnt as though I were stuck here. Regardless, what could go wrong?

...did I really just say that? Clouds pass over the sky, blotting out the light and covering me in shade for a moment; there was a rather large settlement over… that way, their hearts coated in darkness yet still striving on in light. Probably my best bet for now, regardless of Murphy-tempting. I mean, what was the worst he coul- wait, why was the cloud following me? Were those wingbea-

"RRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

"Mother fu-"

That would be when a large, green, scaled creature weighing several tons fell on top of me from the sky, a screaming bundle of fury and violence.

 

[Solsticegelan]

Nobody's Memories
Chapter 4 - A Rather One-Sided fight to the Death​

Shit shit shit thats a dragon thats a dragon why is a dragon crushing me to death?!

"EEEEEAAAAAAAAAAUCH!"

Currently on top of me was a roaring, shrieking, cock-a-doodling..... green,enlarged chicken's head? What? One of its clawed wings raised, falling down as a blur in an attempt to crush my head. Time seemed to slow once more,allowing me to shove it off of me, the creature recoiling in slow-motion, its wing thrown off course; it was thrown off enough that I could roll aside, missing its now wobbling wing as it hopped back. Recovering from my position sprawled out on the dirt road,I push myself up and onto my knees before jumping back, prepared to roll out of the way of another attack... only to find the chicken-headed dragon still in the air, leaping backwards. Its every action was had slowed, as though it were traveling through warm molasses. Not that I had ever seen something travel through molasses, much less molasses itself, but an interesting observation - that time had yet to decelerate for me. It gave me plenty of time to observe the creature in detail - I hadn't exactly gotten much time to do so earlier, what with it roaring and spitting on my face while on top of me and all.

My earlier description wasn't the most inaccurate, but definitely needed a major revision; was it scaly? Yes, it was, but not completely covered. In fact, only its underside had scales, and they weren't even green; they were a dark, putrid yellow color, with both a shade and physical description of the kind one expects from a rooster's talons. Was it green? Oh, most certainly, it was. Covered in feathers so dark a green they were practically black, when they weren't covered in an odd pink-brown baggy flesh, originating from the crest and... Gizzard? Gullet? Whatever the fleshy blob underneath its beak was. Because oh yes, it had a Rooster's face - a browned, murderous rooster that looked like it could, would, and had eaten its smaller kin whole. This entire nasty package was all thrown together into the basic shape of a wyvern, wings of the same fleshy consistency as its gizzard, rippling in the wind, claws, talons, and all, a sweeping yet short plume currently splayed out towards me. All in all, it looked like something out of a Monster Hunter game, but I didn't recognize it.... Perhaps it was a creature from the Frontier that had been added since the last time I had trawled through the wiki? No, that wasn't it....

It had just landed when I realized what world I was in. How could I not, after all? I had just killed one of them less than twenty-four hours ago, before devolving into a trance-like state where I rushed through KHII's ending. It was a goddamned cockatrice.

i was in the Witcher.

I was in the Witcher!

...I was in the Witcher.

Fuck! I'm in the Witcher!

An expression of confusion flickers over the Cockatrices face, it's gaze still locked on where I had been laying, oh-so-slowly turning to find me as I think. So then, if i was in the Witcher, then that made those walking corpses earlier Ghouls, which meant my earlier assessment of 'Meh, I can take em.' Could be rescinded. It certainly still applied to, say, half of the enemies - all the humans without magic, the lower tier monsters, some of the higher tier ones as well. At least up until I figured out what, exactly, i could do as a nobody if i had powers at all, when the 'Easy-to-kill' to 'Run run run!' enemy ratio started to pan out some more, and even then not so much, there was so, so many different things that could screw me if I was taken by surprise it was hardly funny. That wasn't even considering what I might be expected to do if i encountered the wild hunt in its whole, because they were bullshit.

So much Old Magic...

I cut off my thought process for the moment, as time begins to return to normal; the Cockatrices eyes narrowing as they look at me. A quick pat down of my bag reveals no holes, and I drop it, not willing to loose any of my newly-aquired crowns. knew that The Witcher himself never seemed to have enough of them, though that may just have been because I was an impulse buyer more than anything. Shifting back into my cringe-worthy combat stance,I shift my foot back, readying myself. Because yes, there it was - the cockatrice had taken the same stance it had in the game when it would leap into the air, making a sweeping motion with its claws. It would leap right about ... now.

However, rather than roll under the Cockatrice or use the Aard sign to shove it away from me like I might've in the game, I instead lashed out with my arms, leaving myself wide open to attack; My plan was to meet the Cockatrice head on. A thousand pounds of Chicken even MCdonalds would turn down crashed into me once more, my arms meeting its talon's, their edges failing to dig into my skin or gain purchase against my robes; I tightened my grips around the monster's talons, even as the force from its impact shoving us both back several meters, kicking up dust from the dirt road. The cockatrice begins to struggle, shoving againts me and trying in vain to tear me apart, roaring at me, spittle meeting my face once more. I wince,not because the massive amount of slobber was toxic or acidic; I had done so because it felt like I had decided to dunk my face into a lukewarm bucket of soapy water.

It still wasn't enough to make me loose my grip, but y'know. Something that gross was worth paying attention to.

Realizing it couldn't beat me in a straight up contest of strength, the Cockatrice tried to back away, shrieking a bit as it did so, succeeding in taking a few steps back - pulling me with it, and off the ground. Scoffing a bit, I solidified my position by slamming my feet down upon the ground, digging them in deep as it continued to pull and halting the Cockatrice in its tracks within a few moments. Its face twisted into one of fear as it shrieked more frantically, trying to pull away.

A Giant, Grotesque chicken wearing a face of Human fear. Rather grimly, I took time to note that it must have learned from a more... personal experience what a human's looked like, to have naturally assumed it with its life on the line.Not what I expected to see when I woke up this morning, put at least I could cross it off my bucket list.... wait, could I? I technically died, so did I even have a Bucket List? I mean, I hadn't had one be-

"AAAAAUUURAAARCH!!!"

Oh right, giant doom-chicken fleeing for its life. Ignoring its struggling, I tugged it closer, tensing as i bend my knee's, lifting it over my head...

...and with a single motion, throw it over my back, directly into and through several trees. Turning to face it, I watch it slowly struggle to its feet, wings spread as it prepares to flee for its life.

"Oh no you don't!" I cry, sprinting after it. Now, in the game, Monsters had been all but immune to mundane weaponry, silver weapons and magic being the common weakness of them all. Sometimes Magic didn't even work, though if it was simply because of the relative weakness of a Witcher's signs compared to true magic or because they possessed a true, total immunity, I didn't know. I did know that it was, however, the reason a Witcher carried two swords - "Steel for Humans, Silver for Monsters.". I had already killed two ghouls, proving that my fist alone would be enough for the lesser beasts of this world. However, just the same as the talons of the Cockatrice hadn't pierced my skin, they hadn't broken against it, and the skull and skin of the ghouls had put up far more resistance than they should have given the distance I had thrown the second, meaning that they still displayed a not insignificant degree of resistance. I wanted to figure out exactly how far that resistance went, and thusly aimed to stop the Cockatrice from flying away non fatally.

I needed the Cockatrice to stay alive so I could kill it, after all.

Time seemed to slow once more, my body moving as it normally would as I dashed forward, intent on stopping it; with a single leap, I was in front of it, time accelerating once more as I watch its face twist into one of shock as my hand shoots out, aiming for its chest far too fast for it to react-
*Splurch!*
And pain overtakes its surprise, my hand deep within its gooey chest and far past its ribcage as I seek its heart, navigating my way around its fairly alien biology.
*bathump*
Found it.

Within the same second my empty hand entered its chest, it came out, the Cockatrice's heart clutched within, bloody veins still pumping blood in and out. I chose to solve this little problem with a sharp kick to the beast's face, the eye popping against my heel as it lets out one last shriek before spasming, laying on the grass and bleeding to death, a permanent expression of fear to rest upon its face until it was inevitably eaten by ghouls. Looking at my shoes heel - for that matter, at my shoe for the first time - I try and fail to wipe the green goop that was the eye of the Cockatrice off of its silver-white edges. Sighing as I rested my foot back against the ground, shrugging the crushed heart out of my hand, I only had one thing to say about this entire situation.

"Well, that answers that once more."​

 

[Solsticegelan]

Nobody's Memories
Chapter 5 - It had to be unwashed, uneducated peasants in a Deathworld.​

"How... am I fucking tired?" I groan, finally spotting the village. I had no idea how, but mental fatigue had somehow set in on my walk to the nearest village. Not because of the walk, mind you - no, I never would have gotten tired by walking for a hour or two. It was the fact that I was, apparently, a goddamn shining beacon drawing absolutely every monster and magically inclined beast within a hundred miles to me. Now, how would I know this?

It definitely wasn't when the pair of Griffons began to circle above me, attacking not even ten minutes after the Cockatrice had. I could accept the fact that from up above, I was a particularly squishy looking human, wearing incredibly eye-catching robes who looked like a easy catch, especially for the meat I could provide. Of course, I had also needed to do some more testing, so I had been more than willing to accept their presence, leaving behind their corpses within a minute. I probably started to suspect it sometime near when a fucking dozen Alghouls attacked me after I fell into a fucking sinkhole they had covered with a net covered by dirt! My surprise and suspicion came not only from the fact that while yes, Alghouls were intelligent, the most I had ever seen in one place in the game had been two of them, and they hadn't even had an AI distinguishable from a normal ghoul's! Yet I digress.

Perhaps -perhaps- I had been willing to accept that as simple bad, horrendous luck on my part. That my lack of truly in-depth lore was simply biting me in the ass, or that I had encountered a particularly menacing and dangerous pack that had been operating in this area for a while, their last victim before they moved on so as to not catch a Witcher's attention... or so I had reasoned as I slaughtered them all, 3 Alghouls making a run for it and surviving due to my 'mercy'. Mercy, of course, being defined as "They didn't jump into their trap turned my trap" , which I spent several minutes trying to climb out of before realizing it was probably well within my capabilities to jump out of the pit.

It was.

Now, I definitely began to think my suspicions had some merit after the first cat started following me. No, maybe it was after the second? Third? Fourth? I honestly dont know, but they were definitely confirmed once I had - count 'em!- 56 cats following me, both wild and domesticated. It was definitely after the third bear, the fourth pack of Nekkers - a full nest each time, also known as 'I am literally drowning in them!', a fucking Forktail, 3 Wyverns attacking at once, a duskwraith attacking me at noon, the especially large group of drowners, who were miles away from any body of water, a Grave Hag, and finally - but not least - five different fucking earth golems!

The best conclusion I had reached so far?

I, a Nobody, was radiating magic at such a high fucking frequency that I was attracting monsters who normally couldn't even sense the stuff. I was basically a giant neon green sign screaming 'Come eat me or tear me up to use my bones for your unholy fucking rituals!". This theory was further supported by the.... 57 now, cats following me. Within the world of the Witcher, Cats were one of two creatures that could sense and absorb ambient magical energies. They would sit out in sunny spots, soaking it up for hours on end. Cherished, if unfortunately rare, creatures, because of their ability to do so. The other creature?

Goddamned Dragons.

I was honestly surprised I hadn't already managed to snag the attention of one, even with how rare they were, because considering my luck with everything else, I should've already caught the attention of one. Not an understanding, or witty, or particularly old Dragon, no - I should've caught the attention of a sick, goddamned lunatic of a dragon by this point, who felt like murdering me. An actually challenging, difficult fight. But no, couldn't be bothered, because of the fucking mental fatigue. That was outright impossible for a Nobody, and yet basically wading through body's the entire way to the village had managed to do so to me. Right now, I just wanted to figure out exactly what area of the game I was in, and leave this world as soon as goddamned possible. My entertainment was not worth this.

So then, Imagine how glad I was when I finally reached the town, hood pulled up, bloody and goo-covered sack slung over my shoulders, to see the town that took me 6 hours longer than it should've to get to? More than glad enough to fool me into thinking I truly had some form of feeling, considering I broke into a mad dash for the town. Of course, that was a tremendous mistake, because the second several farmers caught sight of me they dropped their tools, broke into a mad sprint, and began to scream. Closer examination at the time revealed that my robes had been totally covered in monster goop and blood, not quite sticking, simply viscous and sticking against it. That... probably helped no ones opinion of me.

Now solstice, are you done narrating to yourself in the past tense? You are? Great! Now then, self reflections done, I slow down, hoping to calm the villagers-

"Wraith! Wraith!" A woman cries, slamming her windows shut, all the Townsfolk hiding, running out of the village, or baring themselves away in their homes. Ok, perhaps not the most.... unexpected reaction I could've gotten from them. Now, why would they assume I was a Wrai-

Oh. Right. The hood that obscured my face in shadow and the blood-covered robes. Probably... probably wasn't a good public image. Breaking into their homes and 'interrogating' them was... an equally terrible thing to do if I ever planned on returning here or gaining a positive reputation as well, so...

"People of.... err... this town! I come in peace! Please, allow me to speak with you face to face!" I shout, having walked into the rough center of the town. The wind began to blow, heavily howling in the late day's heat, shutter fluttering - and immediately slammed and held shut - , the noise ascending into a roar that whistled past my ears, producing a popping noise. Was... was that a tumbleweed blowing past me?

"I mean you no harm! I simply wish to speak, and to obtain information!"

Still nothing but massive, sickly green winds...

"Look, I even come bearing gifts! I declare, swiftly removing the ring from my finger, and taking several gemstones from my bag. Placing them in a circle around me, I raise my arms out wide.

"So come, and accept them! I only seek knowledge!" I proclaim, raising my voice above the wind, spinning around and letting my robes billow even as the winds grew unnaturally fast and loud, almost as though it was whispering in raspy throes of madness, and greener and greener... with rotting grass... and that was a wraith behind me, wasn't it? Slowing my spin, I face the wraith that glows with a sickly green light, from which the wind was originating, whispers coming from a mouth which could not produce sound, simply staring me down. It had taken the form of a woman in a tattered dress, tongue extended, swollen and hanging from her jawless mouth, a skinless skull with hair a pale green color, her entire form wispy and immaterial, a marker that she did not currently exist within this realm in a way most could interact with her...

"Hm. Don't suppose you feel like leaving, Mrs. Plague Wraith?"

"AAAAAAAR RAAAAAAAAA!"

"Thought so." I sigh, taking a step closer to her. She raised her hands, preparing to attack; for though she was not affected by those in this realm, she was able to affect those within.

Normally, that is. I mean, I didn't break the trend of 'Normally', but I could definitely affect her. I had done enough testing with the Duskwraith to figure it out, earlier in the day. Case in point, she was about to lunge at me, something I might easily dodge... but chose not to. There she is, moving forward quickly, momentum just a tad bit too fast for her to stop...

"Gateway, Bitch." I said, opening up a dark portal in front of her that I closed the instant she vanished into it.

"Have fun on the moon!" I called up, looking towards where the moon would rise. Looking back and forth, I found.... absolutely nothing. The wind was gone, yes,but the villagers had not returned.

"I have taken care of your wraith for you!" I call out, getting nothing in response.

"Fine, be that way..." I sigh under my breath. Arms raised once more, I raised my voice higher. "So be it! I understand your doubt, and your fear; yet I shall not be angered by your actions, for they are fair and understandable. I shall leave, and return soon to seek what knowledge you hold! I shall leave my gifts here, as symbols of peace and understanding! Farewell, townsfolk!" I finish, bowing nad backing away into yet another gateway.

I reappear upon a hill overlooking the town, closing the gate behind me. Well then, if this was the reaction I was to expect from everyone I came across...

I supposed it was time for plan B, then.

 

[Solsticegelan]

Nobody's Memories
Chapter 6 - Step one; Kill bandits.Step Two, ???. Step Three; Profit.​

I hadn't been attacked since I left the village.

This was concerning.

Not that it wasn't a good thing, of course; but over the past two hours I had spent out in the wilderness, scouting out the surrounding area and testing several 'things' out, I had yet to be attacked by a single monster. Oh, it didn't mean that I hadn't encountered them, or that they hadn't been hostile - simply that they weren't coming at me in massive swarms dedicated purely to attempting to ambush and kill me. It was as worrying as it was refreshing - no Golems suddenly springing up to make a makeshift cage around me I had to break through, no Chort making a particularly rocky area suddenly trigger into an avalanche.... just random wolf packs that learned to run from me after I killed a group of them without them even seeing me move, a drowner near a pond, and the occasional ghoul near the paths.

There were also, of course, plenty of torn-up landscapes covered in soldiers corpses or hanged 'deserters' and women near said ghouls, but little details like that wouldn't help much. The nearest I could figure - judging by the Temarian lilies and Novigrad suns - was that I was somewhere near White Orchard. Beyond that, though, no dice. No particular landmarks called out to me, no villages that I had come across existed in game, and I had found no one willing to help me, quite understandably. Even after I had cleaned my robes of monster gunk in a river, I didn't exactly make for much of an approachable figure.

Aside from the lack of Monsters I was mildly convinced were building up an army to try and utterly annihilate me, the grim-dark torture porn that was the continent's landscape at the moment, and the equally concerning lack of recognizable landmarks, what other concerning news had I found? Well, let me think... oh, maybe the fracturing dimensional barriers? The holes in the world I had sensed had, naturally, drawn my curiosity once I hadn't been wading through piles of monsters. At first, I had simply been curious about what they were doing there and why I could sense distant hearts, as imbalanced yet not quite overcome by darkness as this world's people were. I, of course, had my suspicions at the time, considering that I was in the Witcher.

Then I watched the invisible cracks chip away at the edges and expand.

Within the context of Kingdom Hearts, a normally "Oh Shit!" situation irregardless of circumstance, yet perhaps not quite so large an "Oh shit!" and more an "Oh fuck!" situation considering the context. Sometime over a thousand years ago, this world had been your average medieval-age earth-like world; then, the Conjunction of Spheres happened. This world, via non-specified means, had meshed with another, the two worlds meeting in a violent manner; and in the aftermath of that, Magic had been let into this world, as had literally everything that didn't also exist in our world. Reading character profiles had revealed that the Wild Hunt was from the world magic originated from, and freely traveled to and from this one for shits and giggles; maybe? Probably.

My Meta-Knowledge supported this fact with memories accidentally watching a video of high-tier monsters appearing from nowhere attacking Geralt as relentlessly as they had me, with fireballs raining from the sky. Unfortunately, that wasn't the most reliable source for my assumptions.

A lack of information here literally might kill me. What a pleasant thought.

So, aside from the Wild Hunt probably being the quite literal and accidental heralds of a Second Conjunction, anything else I would like to add to make the situation on this world even worse?

Not particularly so, no.

But even in my wandering, idle musing, and constant recording of everything I had encountered, I hadn't been doing nothing but despair at how shit this world was. No, as mentioned earlier, I had been recording everything I came across of note… and also sketching out a map of the area, using a large stone with a subtle hum, one which had labeled it as a Place of Power. I had stumbled upon it hidden within a large tree's trunk by sheer dumb luck, and decided to use it as the center of my map. In the hours since leaving the village, I had made a mostly complete map of the surrounding area, marking down locations of interest in a similar manner.

Now, as the sun began to set, everything within a large radius of the Place of Power explored… it was time for Plan B to start.

-0-0-0-​

" 'Ta a bounty well-earned!" Toasted the four bandits, sitting together around a campfire, drinking deep from their booze. Having just successfully killed off a wandering trader and his escorts, one ripe with wares to sell after visiting some large city, they were feeling particularly brave, bold, and accomplished.

Especially when one considered that on at the bottom of his cart were high-quality weapons, leagues above the rusted long swords and axes they had been using before now, barely fit to be used against one of the Black One's armor, even as a joke.

"Cheers, mates! I'm turnin' in for the night." One of the bandits declared, drinking deep from his booze and carelessly tossing the bottle aside.

"Bah, you were always a lightweight when it came to holdin' yer drink, Steve!" Called out a guffawing bandit, who drank deep from his eight bottle that day... and promptly fell off the log he sat upon, as fast asleep as the log he had sat upon was dead.

" And Dale, you never know when to stop! Eh Barry?" One of few remaining awake bandits claimed, chortling all the while. The Bandit, standing and stretching, only responded with loud, bellowing guffaws.

"I'm turnin' in for the night as well, Larry." He yawned, hazing towards the moon located high in the night sky, already beginning to descend for the night. Larry simply nodded, not bothering to tease him ,already enthralled by his own drink.

Stumbling off towards one of several tents, Barry collapsed into his canvas, glad to sleep with a full stomach, warmed by the light of the campfire...

And then the fire went out.

"Light the fire , Larry!" He both mumbled and groaned, stirring in his sleep.

There was no chinking of a flint and steel, no clink of a glass. Not one movement.

"I said bloody relight the fire, Barry!" Barry angrily called out from his tent, making an effort to wake up and sit up, glancing towards where the fire was.

At Larry's body, cut in half and resting in the flames, blood putting out the flames.

Barry made a move to scream, to alert Steven or Dale - no, that was only the upper half of Larry's body ,wasn't it? The other half was Dale's.

Barry moved to arm himself, to awaken Steven who still slept silently without making a single movement-

Where was Steven's head?

"Let's see if this one lasts any longer than the last few swords I tried out, eh?"

Barry tried to move, to scream, to defend himself even as his pants grew soggy and he felt the blood drain itself from his face...

Yet he could only turn, turn to face the specter dressed in white and silver, who's face he could not see. A truly terrible, ghastly sight, his darkened outline illuminated against the dying moonlight and fire- one to fear for the rest of his life. It stood barely a single step behind him, not a sound to be made even as the leaves rustled in the wind and his robes billowed, a blood-soaked sword held outstretched on his Right, an shattered and gore-covered axe in his Left. A few splatters of blood, lightly illuminated, could be seen in contrast to his robes, crimson drops perfectly rounded.

Barry trembled, prepared to barter for his life-

*Ching!*

-0-0-0-​

Dropping the broken axe, I sighed. More test data was good and all, but every broken weapon was a smaller net worth of the goods I was bringing in by slaughtering bandits. Certainly, I had plenty of weapons of varying quality from 'shit' to 'decent', stored away in various bags and boxes now alongside various other goodies I had 'liberated' from various bandit camps, with only the sword I held now of potentially high enough quality to survive more than a hit or two from me before being utterly annihilated; testing its now brittle edge, dampened and cracking, it looked like I would have to keep searching.

"And I remembered finding such high-quality items in random bandit's camps in my constant search for more crowns..." I murmur, looking back at every other bag, box, and cart the Bandits had owned, tossing anything of worth into a small pile where there had been a large enough space. Content that everything had been found, I opened up a Gateway beneath my loot, watching it vanish from this world to safely reappear at a secluded spot I had found earlier.

"Camp 38 cleared; 22 more to go..." I mutter, walking off.

"Definitely don't remember there being this many of them in the Game either..."​

 

[Solsticegelan]

Nobody's Memories
Interlude - Geralt of Rivia​

"Still recognizable Griffons; young, fledgling almost. Feathers haven't even finished developing, still fluffy and soft. Probably just paired off, searching for a nest. Blunt tramma to the skull, beaks torn off.... used to beat it to death? Second one is missing its heart, just like that Cockatrice. Claws are pretty torn up too, couldn't harm whatever they was attacking... died pretty fast, looks like the mutilations were mostly made after their death. Nice, clean cut, deep - oddly curved. Whoever did this did it with their hands..." Geralt murmured, shoving the young griffons body over. Its underbelly was torn up, a mess of torn out flesh and organs, its ribs removed. Not torn out, or shattered - simply missing. Using a small Igni flame to illuminate the Griffins guts, he could even see how the bones had been carefully removed from the spine.

"Organs were scooped out, not with any particular care to use them; they were piled up.... over there. Ghouls got to it, was enough to keep them from picking that much off of the body's." Geralt finished, standing and frowning. This... only painted a further, more confusing image for him.

5 days ago, he had been riding out of White Orchard, the bounty for slaying the Royal Griffon - and more importantly, information on Yennefer's location - in hand, Geralt had ridden forward alone. Vesimer had departed days earlier, to return to Kaer Mohran for the winter, whining of his old bones, and thusly Geralt had quested onward. However, his plans had momentarily... changed when, in the middle of the night, a group of peasants from a dozen different nearby villages had managed to track him down.... begging for his help, screaming of a Silver Wraith. They had offered money, of course - for as every peasant knew, no Witcher would lay a finger without being offered coin. Just as their mum's would sing it.

And Geralt had never seen quite so much of it offered up on any single creature before. Thousands of Crowns, taken from several dozen different scared, desperate villages. Even if he hadn't asked for more information, he would've accept anyway - his coffer never stopped rattling, so to say. He had, of course, asked for more information on the 'Silver Wraith', for such a thing didn't exist. A case of misinformation and a lack of education often made a Witcher's job... far more difficult.

So he had listened to frantic please and requests, of how this specter would walk from village to village, calling and asking to be heard, to be spoken to and learn of the land he walked. His face remained hooded, a endless darkness making up any semblance of human familiarity one might hope to find. His robes would vary from Bloody to Various, and it was always - always - a sign of his presence when Cats began to appear. Most importantly however, and what had Villagers so panicked, were his 'gifts'.

The first place he had appeared was a small village with a forgotten; he had spoken, given the same speech all the others had reported him as giving, and from his blue bag left several items behind. Scared, villagers had accepted it, and prepared to flee or hire a Witcher.

The survivors were barely able to speak, they were so traumatized. A dozen different Wraiths and Necrophages had laid siege to the town shortly after had had left, and if one traumatized young man was to be believed, a Dragon had burnt the town to the ground. News of this town had spread, and thereafter all of his 'gifts' were thrown far, far away or burned, and all the villages visited had therefore stood.

Investigating the town later on had certainly showed it to be burned to rubble, monsters still inhabiting it. Not aching for a fight at the time, Geralt had left to seek out what might easily could have been this 'Wraith''s source.

5 days ago, mere hours before his first appearance, a shooting star had been reported, a bright red comet that had come crashing to the earth. Some peasants had investigated it at the time, and found the corpse of a ghoul, a pile of bones that had been a hermit, and a ransacked house. This is what had caught Geralt's interest, guaranteed he had taken the contract. A mysterious monster who killed for what seemed like fun, appearing after a comet passed through the sky?

The signs of the Wild Hunt. It had certainly been long enough since they had last been seen, and when combined with his recent dreams of Ciri...

Geralt had simply trusted his heart.

Riding onward almost immediately, facts had only grown more muddled from there on out. The man had not been killed by this 'wraith', who matched no monster Geralt had ever seen or heard ofs description, but by ghouls - picked clean weeks ago. He had found tracks in the dirt, and followed them, hoping to pick up a trail to some kind of lair he hadn't found at the first village the Silver Wraith - far better to simply call it that, without sarcastic quotation - but instead, he had found the dead body of a Basilisk, torn apart by ghouls and killed via having its heart torn out.

Riding onward, he had found the griffons. Riding further, faster, eventually not even stopping to investigate the bodies... for their were so, so many of them, each more concerning than the last with every implication their dead body's held, and every question they raised. Everything here simply boggled Geralts mind.

"Or maybe I'm just finally going Senile, eh Roach? Just talking aloud to a horse, trying to puzzle things out? " Geralt muttered, scratching the ear of his trusted steed. Whatever the exact circumstancse of this confusing contract were, Geralt knew one thing.

He would find this Silver Wraith, and have some very choice questions to ask it... with both blade and tongue.​

 

[Solsticegelan]

"Why Do I feel like I'm forgetting something?"*checks SV*
"Oh,right."​

Nobody's Memories
Chapter 7 - Taking Stock & Exposition​

My week in the world of the Witcher had certainly been an interesting one, if not productive. Oh yes, oh so productive. For starters, I not only actually knew where I was - one bandit camp had finally, finally had a map that I had stolen and asked them as to our location on before slaughtering them. Of course, I had hit my head in anger after realizing that I could interrogate the bandits before slaughtering them a la batman style, also known as making them literally shit themselves in terror to get the info I wanted and then dropping them off a bridge. Into definitely drowner infested waters. While they were tied up in sun-dried Buckthorn, for my personal amusement.

...I never said I had to interrogate them kindly or morally.

The total sum of my reaped knowledge hadn't been very large, or exceptionally well-detailed, but it had been large enough to matter. Some of it I had already known, but it had been nice to get a confirmation on - the northern kingdoms current state, the fact that the landmass where everything took place on was simply called 'The Continent'... I could bash their creativity, but humans weren't exactly the most creative bunch where I came from either. "Earth".... really. I mean, at least the people of The Continent had the excuse of being a medieval-aged society on a deathworld! Have we really not managed to come up with a better name? I had even goddamned gotten the planets name, Llarguibas (No wonder it was never brought up in a book or game...) and even though it sounded like a man's death gargles it was probably better than just pointing to the ground and naming your planet earth!

....huh, looking back, I think that it might actually have been that bandits death gargles that he gave me instead of an answer. He... kind of had a razor in his throat, didn't he? Ah well, I digress.

Besides the hastily scribbled information on the general state of the world, which had indeed confirmed that whenever I was in-setting it was during the third Witcher game, I had learned something valuable. I mean, the piles of corpses, battlefields, and hung people who were probably killed because they held valuable property had told me such, but more confirmation was nice. No, bad solstice, stop getting off track! I finally learned my location. It was....

... just a bit south of the area the game had tenuously defined as 'White Orchard', and definitely off the games map. Better than expected, and not the worst thing to happen. I had pinned up a large map taken from particularly well-established bandits close to a well-traveled route on a table in the center of my loot chamber, and using pretty much everything I could, had marked down locations of interest in the surrounding area. Blue marked bandit camps, white marked looted camps, those two pebbles were places of power, wood splinters marked guarded treasures, so forth and so on to mark everything I could remember there being on the game's map, a few markers of my own design added in. A well-rounded conquest, but now I was using it to plot out the course of my adventures.

Oh yes, my Lootcave. I had a Lootcave now and I loved it.

It had always been my lootcave, of course. But at first it simply been a literal cave in a semi-hidden location in a high-up, hard-to-reach place I had decided to dump all the crap I 'reprimanded' from bandits to, rolling up their tents and shoving literally everything they owned into a pile or two and having it appear here, clattering down from the rough ceiling and clattering to the floor in a disorganized mess.

That had been night one.

Sometime afterwards, perhaps after going back to the mostly fine and uneaten corpses of the absolute sea of monsters I had killed a few days prior and sending everything of value from them – heads, eyes, brains, feathers, scales, skin, etc… - onto the pile that I realized what a mess the room was, and how little space I had. My solution to the problem on day two?

FALCON PUNCH!

More accurately, punch everything until the walls had been smoothed, the ceiling raised and domed, and I had made row after row of shelves within the largest section of the cavern. I had precariously organized everything for the next several hours, separating furniture and several tables aside, making everything as space-sensitive as possible. I had a section for everything from the most precious of gemstones to sacks of crowns. The various tents had found their home rolled up on the lowest shelves.

In essence, what I had done to create the area I was storing everything I owned in was bang the walls until they had reached a certain degree of smoothness and depth. Like what someone did to get rid of a dent in a car's bumper. Maybe. I… I wasn't very well versed in car maintenance. I knew there were problems, like durability and consistency and such, but I hadn't seemed to encounter any problems….

The shelves themselves had been the product of my literally punching through several feet and stone and dragging the arm across the wall, repeating the process as many times as necessary.

Work done once more, I had set out for the day, stealing away more and more monster parts, visiting a few villages before setting out at night to once more blindly rob bandits.

Over the next three days of constant looting and failed village-visiting, each with an increasing worry over the fact that I hadn't been sought by anything and while waiting to return to each village after my first visit, I had renovated. Smoothed out the rest of the cavern, added stairs, a few carpets to brighten the place up, stolen coal braziers from an abandoned castle to literally brighten the place up, and generally speaking? I made the place look like an actually decent place to live. I had caved in the single entrance before making a smaller exit for the cats who constantly followed me around, appreciating the entire place, just yesterday.

Because here and now, looking at the place again? It was a work of art. Mostly. Look, point is I was surprised to have even made it.

A constantly turning and sloping downwards chamber at first, the loot chamber – the first room one came across – had alcoves full of boxes, bins and items of interests, more stuff piled high yet not quite restricting access to shelves. Tables were pushed together and placed at odd places, the largest one at the center containing my map I was currently looking over, the others containing varying letters and items I had tried examining myself. Several contained weapons I had layed out to get a better view of in the torchlight, the torches themselves hung between shelves.

A small, open-air stairway descended into several varying chambers, each one lowering, yet no less important. One was claimed by cats, and I had done my best to accommodate them, trying to make it a mini cat-paradise. One was simply full of chairs for relaxation; another had bookshelves claimed from abandoned homes, full of varying books. I hadn't read most of them, but the few books I had claimed for myself in my travels were either fictional, or of magical content. The few not fitting that discussion had shared titles with objects from the games, and thusly I had taken them for a comparison.

All decked out with curtains hung precariously with repurposed chains from armor to the ceiling, several carpets, and a painting of a crying clown from a weird, weird young boy's bedroom in the abandoned manor I had raided.

….No really, that kid gave even me pause because of the crap I found in his room. He was into things so questionable I both hadn't even heard of them before and I was vaguely certain he was the reason monsters had ransacked the place to begin with. Just…. So much white goo. So many summoning circles.

Shaking my head to remove myself from so disturbing a thought track, I got back to the map. My current plans… were a bit limited, yes, but not the worst. Continue recording everything I had taken in my book, record everything of interest in it as well, keep on trying to establish a friendly image with the villagers, try to get to a city to commission a weapon that wouldn't break just because of a mixture of strength applied and weapon misuse, perhaps even find a tutor – those were my plans. Maybe try to give the Bloody Baron some life tips, get him and his life back on the right track. He was an actually good leader when he wasn't a shit father or drunk off his ass, and did care for his family. When he was… y'know, beating them because he was drunk off his ass. I could try to find the Heart of this World… I couldn't do anything to it, but still.

That, and kill the Three Crones of the Woods.

Seriously, I needed to do that. Like, do that now. Mostly because they probably knew I existed by now and could easily be responsible for the fact monsters hadn't attacked me in a while, and wanted to kill me either because they knew what I was, or because they thought I was interesting. Mostly, though?

Fuck the Crones. Seriously.

 

[Solsticegelan]

Nobody's Memories
Chapter 8 - How to entertain yourself while waiting [For Idiots!], Vol.1​

Well, I was done plotting and renovating. There were no more blue markers on my world map. The cats were bored, having left giant gauges in the caves wall and their scratching posts I had bandied together. They had also been housebroken, meaning I had used reverse psychology to ensure they left the cave whenever they had 'business' to attend to by trying to get them to do so in the first place. I had taken stock of each and every item I had looted, taken from every ancient crypt I could find, and gotten as close to a city as possible before returning to the Lootcave based on the premises of it being a terrible, terrible idea to try and go into the city at the moment, alone and without a believable story. I also recalled several cities being strictly monitored at the time of the third game in terms of who could and could not enter, meaning I wasn't likely to get in without a fight.

To summarize. My plans were currently placed on hold by necessity and the fact I would prefer not to build up a negative reputation. I had nothing to do but casually sit in a chair, petting a black and white tabby cat that just loved to be scratched and reading through The Conjunction of the Spheres by the candlelight. Plenty of interesting cosmic mumbo-jumbo operating off of medieval-aged astrological nonsense and ramblings that I picked apart with 21st century science, but beyond that…

A book talking about an awesome, world-shattering apocalyptic event? Surprisingly boring, especially when I couldn't actually get relevant information from it. Sure, there were plenty of historical nuggets and lore-lite tidbits in here, but they were few and far between. I would certainly read through it later, but I had to have better books than this.

…A quick spinecheck told me no, I didn't, not unless I was willing to judge these books by their covers. My current best bets were a small novella that also existed in the game about a dying older woman spilling her secrets of her time spent with an High Vampire, which was hopefully not a twilight expy, and a collection of the great Bard and Poet Dandelion's works from a decade ago.

….Twilight, Dandelion's poetry. Twilight, Dandelion's poetry. Twiligt, Dande- Fuck it, Twlight ripoff. At least that added a Bestiary entry in the game, I might get more out of it than I would flowery medieval-aged poetry spoken in limerick. Pulling the thin, purple book – clearly well kept, despite its yellowed pages – from the shelve, I begin to flip through it on my way back to the seat. A quick shove to shoo a different cat than I had previously been petting off the seat, and then to keep its claws away from this really nice chair I had found in the man whose home I had crashed into, and I had settled down. The book was thin, so perhaps the least of two evils would be over quickly as well.

The Intro was the same text provided to you in-game should you choose to 'read' the item, followed shortly by a table of contents. It was somewhat worrying that they seemed to share my sense of humor in the table of contents, but ah well. Fiction or Non-Fiction, this book would alleviate my boredom one way or the other.

Reading through, to my great, complete, and utter surprise… the book was good. Just…. Really, really fucking good. It wasn't some horrendous medieval Twilight equivalent or trashy romance novel – it was a goddamned amazing story of maturity, aging, and –well, by nature – love. Maturity and issues of the heart, and writing that would fit right in at home in the 21st century and have lead me to praise the book then, even if it wasn't as unique a book there as it was here. It wasn't all boo-hoo death and sobstory, either; it had the wittiest, most charming humor I had read in a while. It… what the hell was a book this good doing here, amongst medieval aged ideals in a deathworld?

The characters had flaws, ideals, hopes and seemed human – they were even subject to the same logic Game of Thrones used when it came to character death. Rapidly turning my gaze to the top of the paper, I had time to realize…. I…. I was only a hundred pages in?! The print was tiny, sure, but seriously? The book was one of the thinnest I had ever seen!

….ok, this was a decent way to kill time. I… I cant stop myself from reading this. Even with the cheesy romance scene I'm on, the writing shines through. By this point in the book, I was fairly certain it was responsible for raising literacy rates. Can't...look...away.... and I'm a Nobody....

Thunder cracks, and I feel the back of my spine rise, shivering in response to the cold rain. Perhaps he wouldn't arrive? I had thought him better than that, learned him to be better than that; he would not lie. This would not be a trap, I knew; turning to face the glassless window frame, I take a few steps forward, wincing at the loud crunch of broken glass and plates. If he had not yet arrived, what might be keeping him? The list of things that could keep him from attending a meeting, no matter how illicit or private, could be counted on but one of my hands - and that was simply viewing him as a man, rather than account for all his wealth and influence.

Running a finger alongside the dusty windowsill of this old ,ratty house, I couldn't deny the place had charm. Nice, pleasant thoughts - that should do well to distract me from any negative thoughts concerning Earnest's well being. The clouds - they're beautiful tonight, just barely hiding the moon and allowing light to filter in, draping itself over me. A sigh. Yes, this is certainly working! Not simply sinking youself deeper into-

*Kr-Thrak!*

"Morgan..." Jumping, I turn to meet Earnest's gaze as he stands in the doorway.

"Oh Earnest do you re-" I stopped midsentance, my efforts towards storming towards him ceasing. He is bloody, cuts and tears that run deep tearing apart his normally fine clothes, blending together with the deep red he normally wears.


"No, Earnest! No!" I bemoan, cats surrounding me, clearly using me as their own personal sitcom. I didn't mind. They were mine.

*Kr-Thrak!*

...It also appeared it was raining and thundering now, and it suddenly occurs to me that I had forgotten to build this place with the rain in mind.

I was already up, time having slowed as I gently placed the book aside; Ok, plans. Count the cats-

9..10...11, all here. Open a Gate...

....step out right next to a large number of rocks. Rain moving so, so slowly that I'm literally running through it, Eenie meenie mini mo.... you look about the right size....

...And then I'm back, already having gone through the portal, closing it behind me to prevent a kitty escapade as I jam it into the cat's makeshift kittydoor I had made amongsts the rubble that had been the caves only entrance. No use having an entrance if you could teleport without needing line-of-sight. Lets see, rains seeping through the cracks int he rubble -

Tents! Use the tents as makeshift towels. Bottom shelves, right over there, shove them out and up, roll this one out.... oh goodie, they aren't affected by my time alteration for more than a few seconds once I let go! Lets see, I put the repurposed chain mail to chains right over... here! Run right on back, shove them in and to the sides with enough force that things start to crack....

....and I have a colorful, yet distinctly terrible, patchwork of stretched out tents where a rock wall once was. Well... better than nothing. If I ever have a guest I can just claim its modern art. Time begins to accelerate, return to normal now that my moment of flurried activity has expired; I take note that I apparently both instinctively and subconsciously urged my perception to slow, doubling the effect, for its taking for longer than it has any other time, with twice the effect.

Hm.

Now I'm bored again. And I haven't experimented with my conveniently slowing perception of time yet... which I seem to constantly refer to as 'Slowing Time' while its occurring rather than as my perception of time having accelerated....

...oh, this was going to be fun.

-0-0-0-​

Observing the arrow five feet from my face, I tipped it upward. Time's flow returned to normal, and I observed it bounce around the rooms many flat surfaces harmless. My perception had returned to normal, and - ha! there it is!

"Again!"

Perception Acceleration Perception Acceleration Perception Acceleration-

Everything begins to slow once more as my perception is altered, from the bemused cats with twitching ears standing behind the crossbow they had just armed again to the arrow they had just launched, flying towards me at mildly eye-disrupting speeds..

- Time Slow Time Slow- Ha!

Grabbing the arrow, I nodded as time returned to normal once more.

"I was right. Teaching Cats to use crossbows to help me experiment was fun!"

"Mrow!"

"You certainly don't disagree. And it only took me the better part of 6 hours!"
​