Remove ads

You That Remain

Reader mode
Remove ads
Elizabeth Gray
  • Threadmarks
    • [X] Disarming Shot (Neutral, Temporarily disable your enemy's offense.)
    [X] Flee (Neutral, Attempt to flee from this battle. Live to fight another day.)

    Through the pain, you watch the guard's motions, each slash from beginning to end. This time you're not bothering with trying to take him close. Even the attempt would be painful with your side cut up, and you don't want to count on... Whatever happened last time.
    Divergence.​
    You move at the edge of his reach, waiting for that right moment, slowly circling the plaza before the gate until you see it. He swings, a diagonal stroke just as you take a step backwards. Too late for even such te3xtbook swordsmanship to turn into a thrust, and as he follows through into the finish, your pistol come up.​
    This is how it should be.​
    The crack of igniting powder rings loud and for a moment the encircling shades seem to waver, flowing like the water. The bullet goes exactly where you wanted, striking the Guard's hand. Once again, that oh-so-human expression crosses his face and he screams, a very personal scream of pain and terror -his scream- as the sword goes spinning across the cobbles, but you've already decided on your course of action.

    You turn, and sprint for the gate. Your feet feel suddenly heavy, and you can hear a howling wind rise around you, whirling with you at its centre, the eye of a storm.​
    The screams of the crowd mingling with the noises of startled animals.​
    That's right...

    With every step, the weight lessens, and the howling rises. At first it is a struggle to make even a shambling jog, but then you are pushing, running, sprinting headlong for the path.​
    This is how I leave.​
    Headlong for the white light, rippling with color, coursing with memory.

    And on and on and on and on and on and on-!
    ​
    --------]Rise.[--------​

    You come awake with a start, catapulting into a sitting position and then immediately regretting such as muscles sore from sleeping on the hard ground give achey complaints in protest. Breathing heavily, you reach one hand up to your forehead to wipe away the thin film of sweat there.

    What... What was that?

    You shudder, wracking your mind. Your memories still seem... Fuzzy, but you can remember more than... That.​
    More than a spark.​
    The city... It wasn't like that, was it? But you do remember that there is a city. You lived there, learned to shoot under her supervision, but then...​
    Her name... What was her name?​
    She was murdered, and you took her gun, and repaid the deed in kind... And then...

    That fight with the fake guard, it had been right and yet wrong all at once. You hadn't killed him... Because you couldn't kill him?​
    Because you didn't kill him.​
    Now your head is beginning to ache too, and you look out. You were sleeping in a shallow cave. Outside, you can just see the first threads of grey pre-dawn light across the entrance, outlining the outside world in gradients of shadow. Grey and Grey and Grey.

    You shudder again at the reminder of that place...​
    The city? But which one?​
    Ugh...
    ​
    Elizabeth Gray, noblewoman, crack shot with a pistol, and now a murderess on the run.​

    Dreams full of Shadows
    [] Roll over and try to go back to sleep for a bit. You can't have gotten much if it's still this early.
    [] Get up and take stock of things. (Choose up to 2)
    -[] Check your inventory
    -[] Search the cave
    -[] Go take a look outside
    -[] Examine your wounds?​
     
  • Threadmarks
    • [X] Get up and take stock of things. (Choose up to 2)
    -[X] Check your inventory
    -[X] Search the cave

    Going back to sleep is unlikely to do more than send us back into whatever the hell thst was

    TI'm to take stock
     
    ...don't count your chickens before they've hatched?

    What?

    edit: oh, okay, translation: "don't make any assumptions about what has, or has not been confirmed"
     
    Last edited:
    kinigget said:
    Going back to sleep is unlikely to do more than send us back into whatever the hell thst was
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Okay, but do we want to try getting a few more clues from hell? A couple more hours' worth of memory/dream-exploring shouldn't mean we won't wake up later to investigate, right? XD
    Knowing our QM, we're actually potentially screwed into reliving extensions of this memory every time we fall asleep. Sigh.​
    Seriously though, unless Someone encourages me to be slightly reckless... There's kind of an obvious route.
    Look at what you've made me do, Spectral. Look at what I have become.​
    [X] Get up and take stock of things. (Choose up to 2)
    -[X] Check your inventory
    -[X] Search the cave
     
    Last edited:
    Hmm... Not about to close the votes when I'm going to bed in the next 30 minutes, but I will post a tally~
    Adhoc vote count started by Spectral Waltz on Nov 10, 2017 at 10:21 AM, finished with 165 posts and 6 votes.
    Click to expand...
     
    [X] Get up and take stock of things. (Choose up to 2)
    -[X] Check your inventory
    -[X] Examine your wounds?

    this seems like a sensible idea
     
    Let's see then... Votes Closed~

    EDIT: Tally is currently borked in this thread, keeps spitting up an error message and then fucking the formatting to high holy hell. Gonna try to fix that first.
     
    Last edited:
    Manually edited tally:
    Adhoc vote count started by Firnagzen on Nov 12, 2017 at 5:42 AM, finished with 169 posts and 8 votes.
    Click to expand...
     
    @SpectralWaltz
    This should now be fixed.
    Adhoc vote count started by Firnagzen on Nov 12, 2017 at 5:42 AM, finished with 169 posts and 8 votes.
    Click to expand...
     
    Taking Stock
  • Threadmarks
    • [X] Get up and take stock of things. (Choose up to 2)
    -[X] Check your inventory
    -[X] Examine your wounds?

    Slowly you get up, working the familiar stiffness of sleeping on hard ground out of your muscles as you rise. The cave is just tall enough to stand in and just deep enough that you cannot see the outside clearly beyond it's mouth, but there's just enough space to stretch each limb one at a time. You brow furrows as you work the soreness out of your sides. At first you flinch instinctively as you remember the wound but no sudden stab of pain comes. In fact, there is no pain at all.

    A quick investigation reveals no bandages and no wound, not even a scar. "Was that... Part of the dream then? But I could have sworn..." For a moment your headache intensifies but the feeling ebbs rapidly. It must have been part of the dream after all then, not something that actually happened right? When he drew steel, you shot his hand before he could make the first swing.

    Right... That was how it went.

    Gods, that dream was so frighteningly vivid, and at the same time, so utterly nondescript, just grey and grey and grey everywhere...

    You shake your head. Now is not the time for this introspection.

    Your coat is folded up next to your lightly padded bedroll, a little dusty from the cavern floor, but otherwise in good enough repair. Atop it rests your mentor's pistol, your pistol now you suppose, what with her being dead and all. A grim smile comes over your face as you remember the sight of that man on the floor, her killer, bleeding out from the shot you put in his gut.

    You can't say you weren't... Satisfied on some visceral level, watching him writhe and bleed and die.

    You're not sure how you feel about that.
    Revenge isn't supposed to feel good... Right?​
    A pack sits at the foot of your bedroll, and a quick examination reveals that you at least thought ahead enough to pack some food. It's not much, a few days worth of rations at most, a week if you can forage for more along the way, but it's something. A wheel of old and crumbling cheese, a variety of dried or salted meats taken from the larder of your estate on your way out the door, and a large tin marked with a handful of runes.

    Chilling, containment... Ah!​
    You had almost forgotten you could read runes... When did you learn?​
    You didn't remember grabbing this, but as it was you were beginning to suspect you didn't remember a lot of things about the past week or so. Perhaps longer. Still, even a minor runescripture artifact such as this container (designed to keep food chilled and preserved for the road) was incredibly valuable.

    Unfortunately, while food seems to be reasonably plentiful, the rest of the pack contains only a single change of clothes and a handful of other sundries such as candles, a small length of rope, and a blank leatherbound journal.

    Typical to your planning, you apparently did not think to grab pen or ink though.

    Something to worry about later you suppose.

    Just as you are re-packing the bag, you hear a shuffling from outside the cavern. Someone moving around near the mouth of the cave.

    What do you do?
    [] Write in...    ​
     
  • Threadmarks
    • You forgot to threadmark.

    [X] "W-who's there!? " Ready your gun hesitantly, you know your head is a mess, and they could be friendly
     
    ... so who wants to scan for invisitext and figure out a better response cause that's just what came to mind imiedetely
     
    Reader mode
    You must login or register to reply here.
    Remove ads
    Back
    Top