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Thrice-Great Blessing: Atavism, Animism, Automatism

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Redium said:
One of the large crystals clicked before the entire opened like a gaping maw. It wasn't like a door, more like everything splitting apart peeling back like with a banana.
[...]
Did she say survive? Fuck no, you'd enough with this!
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Words seem to be missing from both sentences.

[X] A good pair of pants.
[x] Aiden
 
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Spinster
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    • [X] A solid skirt.
    [X] Morgan

    Image is going to be left unset for now. I just don't feel there were enough votes to decide.

    Spinster



    "Morgan," she told the other girl. "Where are we?"

    Sylvie shrugged and pointed directly at the ground.

    "You know where we are, then? Or what I'm saying? Why are you doing this?" Morgan'd met lots of people that could speak French before. The problem was that most of them were super snooty about it. No matter how bad your French and how good their English, they insisted on speaking French.

    "Arrêt. Non," she said. "Vous... êtes prévisible. Tout ce que je parle est inutile. Avez-vous compris un mot? Duex? Je n'aime pas votre désespoir autant que vous." She paused for a second in her torrent. She didn't sound angry, as far as you could tell, more exasperated. If you had to name the tinge the infected her words, that's the one you would use. "Vous n'êtes également pas en difficulté."

    Her piece said, the blonde girl neatly pulled off her long back robe and left it in the alcove. Underneath it was a formal gown, like she had just stopped out of some noble's ball centuries ago. The feeling of dysphoria suddenly redoubled as everything wavered. Morgan staggered, kept from falling to her knees only by landing on the wall and being unable to slide down it.

    It was like ants were crawling on the inside of her skin. Morgan knew she'd been impaled. She couldn't see what had wounded her, but her stomach churned. It was like the organ was trying to rip its way out of her body and pull the rest of her guts with it. Her bones burned, scalded.

    "Morgan?" Sylvie whispered. Her voice was like a shotgun going off in the ear.

    "I... I..." Morgan stuttered. She was dying, she knew it. Drowning, being pulled apart at the seems and cooked from the inside out. The agony was so intense, she could even scream. Her lungs would just spasm harder, stealing more breath from her.

    "Ah..." Sylvie sighed.

    Without hesitation, she calmly raised her hand and then rammed it as deeply in Morgan's chest as she could. Morgan felt it squirming inside her. Fingers slowly curling through flesh and blood and bone before drifting through her. Sylvie carefully pulled back her sleeve so that it didn't get caught when she finally thrust her arm arm up to the elbow.

    Morgan finally managed to scream when Sylvie tore her arm back in a spray of blood. It was agonizing, but it felt good. Relief. She couldn't move, she was on the ground. Things were hazy.

    "Vieille fille."

    Sylvie... she was staring at a... shadow was the best way to describe it. The thing looked like twin pieces of twine, wrapped around itself endlessly. Morgan didn't have to look closely to know instantly that each fiber was twined and entwined again and again and again. The mass quivered and then rose as one. The figure was human-like, but the proportions were wrong. The entire thing looked stretched out and its head nearly touched the ceiling far above Morgan's reach.

    The fibers loosened, allowing dark clouds to gather between the wrapped shadow. The entire thing rattled like old rusty chains before bending double at the middle. The ends of the doubled helix flicked up, cocking like a boxer's fist or a scorpion's stinger. The clouds between the helices condensed into black venom. The stone itself hissed where errant drops stuck it.

    "Fulgur!" Sylvie shouted. Lightning sparked from her outstretched hand, crashing through the corridor. Glowing crystals shattered as the bolt jumped like a snake, striking erratically. Morgan couldn't track it at all, only try to shut out the afterimages flashing through her eyelids and take cover as each bolt exploded the air and sent chips of stone and crystal tearing at her.

    The shadowed helix barely seemed to realize it was under attack. The creature twirled and lashed out. It was heedless of the fact that it stood against a girl wielding what was once described as deific power. Step by step it came closer. Even when it was struck and links exploded into shadow and black venom, it continued.

    "Don't..." Morgan whispered. There was blood everywhere. Sylvie was retreating under the force of the onslaught.

    Pulling back, Sylvie thrust her hand forward. The air wavered. When the doubled rope being whipped around and slammed into it, it echoed like a gong. Iridescent waves rippled out from each strike. The sight as the ripples crossed and crisscrossed, settling into bright fractal patterns that hurt to look at.

    The iridescent shield pulsed, starting to spin in time with Sylvie's gestures before surging forward and blasting the twined ropes as far down the passage as Morgan could see.

    Sylvie wasted no time in stepping forward, pushing against the stone below. It responded, a massive pike rising and rushing forward until it slammed into the ceiling ten feet distant.

    Then, it bloomed. There was no other way for Morgan to describe what happened. Hundreds of briers erupted from the pike, creating a veritable wall of stone thorns. Nearly solid stone stood between Morgan and the thing that was attacking them. Only the tiniest of cracks and gaps remained.

    It returned with a vengeance. Stone collapsed, chips and chunks carried through the defense on a shock wave of dust as the entire construct shuddered in protest. The twined shadow crashed through two feet of stone in the first second of its return. Within three seconds it had twined through the next half and flexed. Tearing itself almost in half, the twined shadow exploded in a cloud of caustic venom.

    Five more seconds for that thing to cut through and she could be dead, Morgan shuddered.

    Sylvie didn't gesture this time, merely spoke: "Strike turbine."

    Morgan went blind after that. There was a rush, a flash of light, and suddenly fire, white hot and hungry.

    Nothing was left of the twined shadow. Nearly nothing was left of the stone defenses either, they'd been reduced to running slag sagging under their own weight. Everything was gone in that single torrent of fire. Only a thin waver in the air betrayed the presence of another shield that had likely saved their lives.

    "What...?"

    "Vieille fille," Sylvie responded. "Vous ne comprenez pas. Supporter?" She offered a hand, the same one that she'd used to tear that monster from Morgan's being. It was pristine.

    Her own hand coming up to the middle of her chest, Morgan didn't know what to think. There was no blood, no stickiness, no aching, gaping wound there. She had seen Sylvie's hand crash through her breast bone, seen it go in all the way up to her elbow. She'd felt Sylvie rummage around through her insides and then tear something out of her. It hadn't been her heart, but it had been something close. Morgan knew she should be dead. Instead, she sat there completely unharmed.

    "Tell me how," Morgan almost ordered. She'd had enough, fuck this noise. There had been enough times in her life where she'd been lead around. She hadn't even been here ten minutes and she was already sick to death.

    "Apprendre le français," Sylvie responded. "Je ne parle pas anglais. Vous devez apprendre le français."

    Morgan allowed the other girl to get the last word it. What could you say to someone who told you to: 'Apprehend the French?' Charlotte would know. She was the one that always knew exactly what to say to get a laugh. Thinking about her friends made her stomach roil. Later, Morgan said to herself, you can deal with it later.

    Instead, she tool Sylvie's hand and let herself get pulled to her feet.

    "Excellent." Sylvie's hand snapped forward and the shield sealing off the still molten corridor flexed, driving itself deeply into the wall. Stepping forward seemed to drive it forwards. Sylvie never got any closer to the shimmering shield regardless of how quickly she moved or how much molten stone was scrapped off the walls ahead of her. Morgan didn't have the faintest idea how much lava — or magma, they were underground, weren't they? — was pushed aside by the shield, but it had to be tonnes. It didn't look like it took any effort.

    What really got to Morgan, though, wasn't the impossibility of what was going on, of being kidnapped away or having a monster ripped from her, but the crystals. They didn't move. Whenever Sylvie's shield brushed past them, whether they were as large as her head or as small as her fingernail, they didn't move. She'd mad the mistake of stepping on one and her shoe still smoked from the brief contact. They were red hot yet didn't radiate heat. Even gravity didn't seem to affect them. Some crystals literally hung in the air, forcing her or Sylvie to step aside.

    Stopping abruptly, Sylvie turned back to Morgan. "La ville de Pyxis," she said simply. Lava burst from the tunnel and revealed the so-called city.

    It was beautiful, Morgan thought. It was located in a cavern dominated by a massive central fissure dropped far away into the dark. Above that were two butterfly wings wrought in crystal. They looked like stained glass, shards of colour connected by thin-spun webs glinting in the gentle not-light, throwing off all the hues of a rainbow. Below that, a massive plateau held countless buildings. Most were made of cut stone, but Morgan could also see the glint of steel, glass and crystal.

    The entire cavern was shaped like a giant horseshoe with the city, Pyxis, at the top. Twin bridges seemed to connect the main city to the pathways cut into the corners of the cavern.

    Morgan realized that they weren't quite at the bottom of the U, but they were far out. "You live there?" Morgan asked. She added a sleeping gesture to get the point across.

    "Oui."

    "Salué, Sylvie!" a stranger called out.

    Flinching and turning slowly, the other woman faced the newcomer and responded with a long torrent of French. There were two of them, twins. For a second, Morgan thought they were identical, but a hint of gravel in the one's voice hinted that he was male and the lack of it in the other's voice betrayed her femininity. She could see more differences as they got closer, a tiny scar across the boy's eye and a difference in eye colour, but the resemblance was extremely uncanny. The two of them looked far closer to clones than any brother or sister Morgan had ever scene.

    Regardless, both were beautiful. Hair so blonde it was silver or white, and piercing blue-grey eyes marked both of them. They were on the feminine side of androgynous; they looked elfin. They even had the ears like something out of Tolkien or The Legend of Zelda.

    Looking back at Sylvie, Morgan hesitated. She didn't know what was going on and she hated that. Among her friends, only Charlotte had been better dealing with people. Ava might've been better dealing with people who wanted to slam their heads together and beat their chests, but Charlotte had an undeniable charm.

    Sylvie looked like she was walking across broken glass. Barefoot. Everything about her was brittle.

    And Morgan couldn't tell why. The two twins sounded nothing but polite, as far as she could tell, but what use was that if she didn't know what they were saying? Charlotte had always said that you could call someone a filthy rotten whore and as long as it was said lightly and with a smile, they'd take it as a joke. Tone meant nothing.

    Finally, they turned to her.

    "...est Morgan," Sylvie finished.

    "Morgan?" the boy responded. "Fair maid, I has't the f'rtune and wh'rewithal to beest nam'd Sigmund. Beside mine own p'rson stands mine own belov'd Sigline." He reached down and gently kissed your hand.

    "You speak English?"

    "I wouldst dareth desire so. T's not oft yond I receiveth to speaketh the language of kings, barbarians, and conqu'r'rs. "

    Your eye drifted over to Sylvie. As far as you could tell, she was trying very hard not to telegraph her emotions. Sigline wasn't much help either. She just seemed as amused as her brother.

    "Alas, mine own sist'r doest not speaketh the grand language. The lady doth feel t unw'rthy f'r the tongue of the Thrice-Crown'd. Fain, I doth not bethink samely. Setteth yond matt'r aside, who is't thee careth to joineth us in hospitality?"

    How do you respond?

    [X] Accept
    [X] Reject

    How do you convey your message?

    [X] Forcefully
    [X] Cleverly
    [X] Diplomatically
    [X] Write In
     
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    • Woa, very interesting stuff here! I love the language barrier here, haha, but it seems like the twins might be from the past?? I wonder if Morgan is going to be intersecting different times...

    [X] Accept
    [X] Cleverly

    I mean, I would really love forcefully and diplomatically in there, too, but I haven't seen a really smart, resourceful character in a while. Let's see how this goes!
     
    [X] Accept

    [X] Forcefully

    OF COURSE I AM UTTERLY DELIGHTED TO BE IN YOUR PRESENCE MR. X! WE'LL HAVE A JOLLY GOOD TIME HUNTING MAMMOTHS!!
     
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