InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "to the windooooow to the wall!"

Skandra Tyullis (roll_the_bones) wrote in adusta,
@ 2010-09-03 19:50:00

Entry tags:

aeotha easaahae, singularity, skandra tyullis

altered worlds (aeotha)
Skandra grimaced at the nothing that greeted his face. More blackness. Only... no. He was lying on a bed of cool polished stones; that much he could feel from the pressure on his cheek. Skandra pressed his palms into the stones. They were just piled; one on top of another, just like you might see in a river bed. Must have been piled pretty deep, too; there was no give as he pushed off with his hands. Every creak in his bones reminded him that he'd been falling once. And might be again, if the strangeness of his surroundings was any guide to what the hell was going on. Skandra was standing tall before he realized that he'd left his had on the ground. Bleary eyes blinked furiously as he stooped down to pick it up. It was only then that he realized precisely what he was standing on. And precisely why this all seemed so unusual. Instead of the drab gray he was expecting, Skandra found himself staring at smooth stones that appeared to be made of glass.

Well, fuck.

Each stone was transparent as a good window, with some dots of color trapped within. It felt like stone and looked like something else. And there was a lot of it - more than a few layers down it became a blurry gray mass, but he could clearly see some of the stones contained gold flecks and others black drops. They made not a sound when he stepped on them. A quick heel plant yielded the same result. Whatever they were, they were immune to his particular charms. Against the sudden cold he lifted the collar of his coat. One clasp after another was worked in earnest. A curious sound in the back of his throat before he kicked one of the stones. His toe burned like fire. The stone did not move. He might as well have dropped a brick on his own foot for all the good it had done him. And now he was worried he'd broken his gods-damned toe.

In frustration he slung out an arm, knees bending as he did. The stone was pried from the ground with good intentions but great difficulty. After a few seconds he needed both hands just to hold the damned thing. Skandra heaved with all his might, and the stone was disposed of, while he stood heaving wildly. How could something be that heavy? And how the hell could he have fallen on it without dying? A groan from behind him seemed to voice similar questions; Skandra's head spun to reveal Aeotha, stretched out on that painful rock; he took a knee beside her. Surprisingly she did not resist when he lifted her from the stone, cradling her back and legs, lifting her off the ground. He felt as though his own knees might buckle any second now. She couldn't be feeling much better, no matter how athletic she liked to think she was.

A great and terrible grinding drew his eyes upward.

Hovering in the sky and seemingly unaware of them was the fattest, ugliest dragon that Skandra had ever seen. Its body was one long, hideous bulb of gray that seemed to catch light - despite the fact that every inch of that sky was taken up by gray clouds. Then another. And another. There were seven or eight of the damned things, all missing wings and heads and other things that he might have been able to identify. How did they fly without wings? They were circling overhead, but at so tremendously slow a speed that Skandra doubted they'd ever be able to hunt and kill anything. Yet the grinding was coming from them, and it was growing louder all the time.

Brainless animals? Or maybe some kind of... but what the hell were they doing here? Had Skandra and Aeotha actually arrived anyplace in particular, or was this just another fever-dream? His fever-dream?

"What the fuck is going on," Skandra muttered at nobody.

Aeotha's eyes were still closed. Nevertheless her hand was clinging to his neck. Must have been cold. Should have given her the jacket. Anything to wake her up faster; she could worry about staying warm when she was conscious. Skandra tried to remember what Shantar had said as clearly as he could. Don't forget. Looking for. Might not arrive together. So was there any point in standing here, waiting around for Shantar and Líobhan to make themselves known? Were they going to? Tch. There were just as many things he didn't know now as he didn't know... wait.

Wait. He did know. He'd seen this before.

The long, seemingly endless journey through strange and mutable space into a new destination. How could you test it? He knew he wasn't talking doubles, didn't he? Or seeing things that he couldn't interact with properly? Eyes turned toward the heavens. Those gray blobs were still overhead, circling endlessly against a field of ... more gray. Different gray. Well, this might qualify as some strange shit, and it might not. He didn't know where they were. He just knew it wasn't the world he was from. Eyes darted left, then right. Shoulders tensed.

"Did I fucking say this twice?"

He was like a rodent then; face and shoulders taut, eyes darting endlessly, searching without being able to see for the repetition of his statement. It might come from him. Maybe his doppelganger would cut a hole in space and eternity to fucking repeat it before it stabbed Skandra in the face and took his place. Well, that was just unfounded paranoia. He certainly didn't have any reason to think it was going to be that way.

"Wake up," Skandra told Aeotha, who was still being carried as the Immortal set out walking. "You're heavier than I remember. What have you been eating?"

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the_holy_path
2010-09-04 06:37 am UTC (link)

It wasn't pain, at least not physically. Though it hurt in an almost similar way. Her stomach felt as if it were in knots and her head, her head was much worse for wear. She'd been falling. He'd been falling. They'd been falling. Falling and falling forever. Somewhere in that everything had gone black, blacker than before, and she'd.. she was unconscious wasn't she? She felt cold, where ever she was, or what she was now, she simply felt cold. Cold all over. But the pain was there, running down the length of her limbs. She had limbs, a body, a head. She was limp though and in pain. But what was she, or where was she? And why did it feel so impossible to open her eyes. The groan that escaped her was as much from the pain as it was in frustration over not knowing anything.

Finally it felt as if she was lifting from that heavy pain. That ache. But not the cold. She felt like ice, but there was something warm and welcome against her, around her, holding her from the pain that had been there just a second ago. A voice. Aeotha squeezed her eyes shut tighter, but leaned against the warmth and tried to remember what it was she was doing. They were doing. The voice again. Finally she opened her eyes and the groan that left her was at the light it felt too bright. Aeotha cupped her free hand back over her eyes. Did he just accuse her of being heavy? He.

Skandra.

"Are you complaining about my weight?"

Aeotha opened her eyes again and squinting against the light she looked up at him.

"Where are the others?" She stretched out in his arms as much as she could, but her body felt as weak as it had a second ago. "Where are we?" It came back like a flood and her body tensed. They were in that sphere, weren't they? But it had never seemed this bright and looking past his face she saw the shapes of.. Her mouth fell open and Aeotha wasn't sure she wanted to know. Uaine.

The pain that name suddenly brought her.

"I can try to stand, if it would be easier."

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roll_the_bones
2010-09-06 06:35 am UTC (link)

"Yes," Skandra said pedantically. "No idea, no idea, and fine."

In truth he wasn't sure how much farther he could have carried her. They were both suffering from the effects of whatever the hell they'd traveled from, even if he was faring better than her. Shantar had said they might be split, hadn't he? And he wanted them all to look for something. Skandra wasn't sure what the hell he was supposed to be looking for in the first place. Shantar had taken too long figuring out where they hell they were and what the hell they were supposed to do. Although - if this was like the first time, why had there been no supposedly ancient being to guide him to the right place? A fellow in blue robes had been there, hadn't he? Talking as though he knew all the secrets of the universe. Skandra was lowering her gently to the ground, feet first, and trying to remember what he could about that first trip.

This was not the Empyrean. That much he could tell just by looking. Unless they were in a different part of it?

"Fucking Shantar," the Immortal muttered.

That was when he saw it. Peering through those stones of glass, down but not too far, Skandra could see it. It looked like a hand. Digging was going to take forever - but it had to be a hand, didn't it? A human hand. The light in the sky was orange, where it cracked the clouds of silver and gray. This did not make a searching gaze any more capable of penetrating the haze all these stones became. Skandra was obliged then to fall to his knees, face coming closer to those glass stones. Yes, there was an arm down there, nearly invisible, and that led to -- the sight of it was revolting. Most of it was an Elvish head, fixed in an expression of horror.

One of the glass stones was embedded in its head. Blood was leaking out, and he could see it even from this distance. Yet there was nothing could be done about it now. The film of death wasn't visible on the fellow's eyes - yet Skandra felt fairly fucking certain that having a stone embedded in your skull was not going to have a net positive effect on your health.

"Fucking hell."

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the_holy_path
2010-09-06 06:04 pm UTC (link)

Aeotha steadied herself on her feet, all of her muscles felt tense as if she hadn't used her limbs in ages and decided to try running a race. It was the sort of unease and pain one had after a long hard battle but it had been nothing like that. She cast her eyes at the sky had they fallen all that distance? The sky seemed to stretch on forever, but there were things flying, hovering up too far to see up close, but horrible in moving around there. Aeotha cast her eyes back on Skandra who was cursing his grandfather. She wondered how much Shantar did know about this place and where he was now. He'd said they might be separated, likely even, but not how to find each other.

Aeotha pressed her palm against her temple and started to rub it, it felt as if shed been clubbed. She still felt out of place and wasn't sure what was going on or why this was going on. Shantar had muttered something about stars, but how could they be anywhere near stars while falling, or if it was possible how could they possibly transverse that distance from firmly on the ground to there. Impossibilities. She wondered if all Immortals dealt in them. Skandra had done some impossible things with his alchemy before, but this was..

Could it be alchemy?

He was looking at something now. She bent down slowly to get a good look as well, but what she saw, Aeotha did not fall to her knees, instead she drew up to her full height and covered her mouth. She deal in death, or at least the reserve side of it Preventing such things. Was this one of the villagers?

"Gods. What is happening here? What is this place?" She was frustrated, confused, and even a bit disgusted. Simply put, Aeotha was annoyed by the fact that she could do nothing, and even if she could do something she did not know what it was. She certainly hadn't dealt with anything like this before.

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roll_the_bones
2010-09-07 02:46 am UTC (link)

He needed to think. This was what he set out to do, fumbling a clove out of his pocket and sticking it in his mouth. The spiced oil seemed to burn against his lips, but he tried not to think about that. Instead he was fumbling for a match. And all the while he was thinking to himself. What had the fellow sad? The first time, what had he said? The match scraped down the side of Skandra's face, and the fire whispered beneath his nostrils as he lit the clove. One giant sucking down of air quelled that uneasiness in his gut. And as it streamed out of his nostrils he offered the clove to Aeotha.

"You'll feel better," he told her.

All of this was taking him back there.

And it was not a pleasant feeling.

There were other worlds, of that much Skandra was sure. Or thought he was sure. The man in blue and Shantar seemed to agree on this point. Only the last time something like this had happened, he'd found someone on the other side to tell him what he needed to know. Why wasn't there some half-dead, facedown man here to tell him what he needed to know? What had the fellow in blue said? It was there, right on the edge of his lips, taunting him. The key was traversability. That's what he had said. Traversability. What Skandra had later read said something about traversability... fuck! He was not a reader.

"It was a connection," Skandra fumbled the clove back between his fingertips, and shoved it into his mouth; it stayed there this time with the Immortal puffing away. "You start out in one place and enter a tunnel of ... well, I guess it's a tunnel of energy. Don't laugh. But Shantar said something like that was impossible. He said you could go in through one side, and even see the other side, but you'd never make it there before the tunnel collapsed around you."

In fact, the older Immortal had nearly called Skandra a liar. Maybe he was having some second thoughts here.

"But the last time I saw that was in the midddle of a fucking desert," Skandra was now objecting to his own ideas. "What the hell could have happened to cause a thing like that here? And why didn't we end up in the same place?"

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the_holy_path
2010-09-07 10:02 pm UTC (link)

Aeotha looked at the clove, and took it between her fingers. She didn't smoke, she'd tried of course long ago, and recalled having him press the clove into her fingers before. But that was only to hold it, this time she put it between her lips and squinted at the thing before inhaling one long breath, she held it back out to hm as she held the smoke in. Suddenly her mind reeled and her throat closed and she coughed. She covered her mouth with a hand. He was talking she cleared her throat. Now her body ached from coughing, she almost glared at him but after expelling the smoke she did feel somewhat better.

Another day he would have been laughing at the fact that she couldn't even smoke a clove.

Aeotha pulled her pack off one of her shoulders and turned it around until she could get inside of it. From inside of her pack Aeotha produced a wineskin, it was filled with wine, but she held it out for him to take first. He'd carried her for a time and he probably needed it just a little more than she did.

"That sounds impossible. How is such a thing even.."

She looked around again, eyes taking everything in again.

"It could just be a trick, couldn't it? Those mind flayers could put thoughts, memories into us. If we were asleep maybe..? Are you sure this is even real?"

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roll_the_bones
2010-09-09 04:40 am UTC (link)

"Mind flayers?" Skandra asked with a scoff. "Those things are made-up."

She had a valid point. How was he sure that any of this was real? Because he knew that what he saw, however he saw it, no matter when he saw it, was real. Or real enough. How would his own mind play the same trick on him that someone else was playing on her? They were seeing the same thing, walking across the same stones, and one of them wasn't likely to be caught in a web designed to deceive. That was how he had to know that it was real. A knife, in his hand. A glance at his empty one. One cut - but what would a cut tell him? If there was something sinister at work here, if the wool truly was being pulled down and over his eyes, Skandra didn't think cutting his hand was going to tell him anything. Cutting her hand? Throw the knife at her? Parlor tricks. Not that he would have done it anyway.

He just thought it was funny to think about, given how heavy the stink eye she was laying on him felt.

"If this really is another world, that means we passed through a gateway," Skandra murmured in annoyance. "And the question really becomes, then, how did we find ourselves in such a gateway? What in all the hells you can imagine was it doing there? These things don't just appear out of thin air. You've got to know what you're doing. At least, I assume you've got to know what you're doing. Shouldn't you have to know what you're doing?"

Ahead of them was a great stone wall, though it was not cobbled-together as he might have imagined. At least as tall as three men were high, smooth on the surface - unnaturally smooth. Skandra cast his eye to the right, and then the left, peering into the gray around him for whatever he could see. It was the same on both sides. Now he stopped, twisted 'round, peered over his shoulder. As far away as it was Skandra thought he could see a wall in the distance. In fact, in spinning, he deduced - through observation - that the wall was actually one smooth wall, with rounded sides, making this place seem very much like a bowl.

He'd only seen one bowl naturally, before, and it was not half-filled with stones. They had to be unnatural. Didn't they?

"Don't answer that," Skandra mumbled; his distraction dominated his thoughts once again. "What is this place?"

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the_holy_path
2010-09-10 04:59 pm UTC (link)

Made up?! Aeotha rounded on him and glared with everything that as in her. He had no idea what was made up and what wasn't, did he? This kind of thing, this place his explanation. That was made up! This could not be happening but those Mind flayers.. the illithid, they were real. Too real. Sometimes she could close her eyes and that blurry memory that wasn't even her own would haunt her. She could have left the temple, she could have even just stopped travelling and settled down somewhere. It wasn't as if it was impossible. Her life was just dangerous. She never turned down someone in need. She stared at him for a long time before he began talking again.

She hadn't told him about the mind flayers had she? She recalled mentioning them before entering the underdark together. No one had spoken up then, but when first setting ones eyes on the underdark was a daunting thing for any man, woman, elf, or prince. She almost smiled, almost, but it was in memory and the memory fell away as he continued to talk.

"Why do you ask me questions when you don't want me to answer them, or know that I couldn't possibly begin to answer them?" Aeotha muttered in annoyance, crossing her arms and looking from side to side, front to back, then back up towards the sky.

"I thought we would be finding them once we'd made it.. through the fall. You said you'd seen some place like this before, or been through something like this Skandra. Been through this before? How did it happen last time? Who had caused it last time.. isn't it possible that.. it's just happened again?" She pinched her arm hard and frowned.

She wasn't dreaming.

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roll_the_bones
2010-09-10 07:34 pm UTC (link)

Women.

You would think a highly-trained temple priestess, skilled in the arts of diplomacy and telling men what they wanted to hear - they were better than whores by far in this regard - could manage to make it sound like talking to him wasn't a nightmare, listening to him sort through things wasn't an awful experience, and bitter endurance wasn't the only emotion she could currently experience. Then again, Skandra supposed you didn't have much that would prepare you for Skandra Tyullis when you were just training at a temple. Probably some half-bald, half-blind paladin who swore a lot and talked about how good he was at his job. Scared a few priestesses and such. Made the new acolytes piss themselves.

Something told him he didn't want to hear the inevitably boring stories, so he didn't bring up his theory.

"I was traveling in the desert with a friend of mine," Skandra kept up his walking as he talked. "Looking for Uathis, who as usual was in over his head. What we ended up finding was a gateway to the Empyrean."

At her blank and inquisitive look, he rolled his eyes.

"The heavens. The place where the gods live, where the tree of life grows eternal?"

Smoke was streaming from the side of his mouth. He didn't wait for her to say she understood. He just plunged onward and stopped worrying about how much of this was actually making sense to her.

"Traveling through that gateway to reach the Empyrean felt like... all of this," and he gestured expansively with one hand. "There were... everyone was talking twice. Everything that happened repeated itself. And then we were in a cage, and Onainat was looking at her mother, only it wasn't her mother. And then we were at a fountain... this must be the same travel, but a different destination. Gods damn it! Shantar was finally right about something. Aeotha, do you realize what's going on?"

He'd stopped. Planted his feet, and seized her by the shoulders. His face was illuminated by excitement.

"We're on another world! I wonder if anything lives here..."

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the_holy_path
2010-09-10 08:00 pm UTC (link)

Aeotha was staring at Skandra as if he'd grown another head. She was sure that he'd done something to himself, maybe ate something that'd gone off. The heavens. Other words. She was a Priestess and even Aeotha thought that some things were far-fetched. Going to the heavens, alive, and obviously making it back was impossible. Impossible! She made a baffled noise at him as he seized her shoulders. Mentioning Uathis had only made Aeotha visibly disgusted but it washed off her face as she looked at him. Excited as a boy who'd just seen his fight real Knight. As a girl finally seeing the shining city of fountains and knowing she'd be living there.

"Excuse me?" Aeotha rapped her fingers on his elbow.

"Wake up. There's no way that's possible Skandra. We can't travel to other worlds, and even if we could. Well, how do you suppose we're supposed to get back?" Aeotha wasn't delighted about this. She didn't even believe this. She stared at him and finally put both of her hands on the collar of his coat and tugged.

"Listen to yourself! Excited! There was a dead elf back there. And what about Uaine? Delighted Skandra! Excited! Wondering if something lives here!" She was disgusted. Aeotha pushed off of him and started to walk again. She had to get out of here. She had to find Shantar, slap him because he'd be excited too, and take the other Priestess back with her. Somehow.

"You seeing the world tree. You, of all people, stepping onto holy ground and believing it's the place at all."

Aeotha threw her hands up and made an exasperated sound. She wanted to return and fix this. She wanted to find the others and get the hell out of whatever this was. Her head was beginning to ache all over again. "You're not making any sense to me at all."

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roll_the_bones
2010-09-11 05:37 am UTC (link)

Well, maybe she had a point. Somebody had died.

Still... to think they weren't in heaven or hell, but in some other place, where things might live. Skandra stared up into the sky again, his feet carrying him forward - those gray masses were still there, circling above this most unnatural of bowls, far out of his reach. Were they alive? Was it just some natural feature whose purpose he could not guess? Frustrated by his own lack of comprehension the Immortal nevertheless pulled his notebook from his pocket. There was a pencil pinched between the pages, and this he put to use, sketching as best he could while he followed after Aeotha.

"You think the goddess talks to you," Skandra's words were slow, since his attention stood divided. "I don't know what seems so impossible about another world."

Uaine... she'd been killed by the experience of traveling here. Skandra was lucky not to have died a thousand times over during his visit to the Empyrean. Nobody could have prepared him for what he was going to see and feel on his way through to the other side. It seemed as impossible as just about anything he'd ever done, really, but the difference was people believed him when he said he'd punched a woman. Talk about visiting another world, though, and suddenly that was the impossibility to end all impossibilities.

"Gateways don't open on their own," Skandra charged right over her with words. "That kind of energy can't sustain itself indefinitely. It needs ... a spark, something to use up, and ... ah, it's like your magic. It has to be brought into existence by something and then kept there. You stop keeping it in existence and it goes away. At least, that's how it should work."

So what ... how did he explain the black sphere with that logic? Shantar might have an idea, if he was still alive, but Skandra was beginning to doubt it. They couldn't have been this far apart, after all.

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the_holy_path
2010-09-11 06:02 am UTC (link)

Aeotha opened her mouth to answer him but shut it just as quickly. She did believe that Lorien spoke to her, but Aeotha also didn't share that information with just anyone. She almost wanted to tell him to be quiet, though it wasn't like anyone would hear them. She'd told him because she thought he'd... He'd make something of it that she couldn't. The waring, no the promise. Happiness and Sadness in equal measure. Pain and pleasure as well. She wanted to believe that everything she'd been through was for a good reason. To make her stronger, to.. if it wasn't then it was just madness and it'd eat away at her. She chewed on the corner of her lip. She shouldn't have been thinking about that. About her past. She hugged herself suddenly. Eibhear had been there... hours ago? Was it days? Was it wrong to want that.. falseness back?

He kept talking and Aeotha continued to walk. She wanted out of here. Find the girl, find the alchemist and find their way out of here. Aeotha didn't understand him, she didn't understand how this was interesting or.. it was dangerous. It'd got Uaine killed and all Aeotha kept thinking about was how.. how real all of this felt. From the dream, it'd been a dream hadn't it? To Uaine's death.. to here. Here in this big.. bowl. It looked like a bowl. A bowl filled with rocks. With a dead elf. With them.

She could understand the logic. Even the idea. Magic couldn't be sustained forever. Not even those that were chosen or those Elementals which lived forever and learned to tap into nature itself.. there were limits. Limits of time. Of Strength. There were also things one simply could not do no matter how they prayed, because it was beyond doing. This all seemed beyond doing.

"Why would anyone open a gateway to another world over a village of people?" She said mostly to herself. She didn't believe this was another world. She tried pinching herself. Nothing.

It felt like a nightmare.

"We should worry about finding the others."

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roll_the_bones
2010-09-14 05:24 am UTC (link)

Skandra thought about her question instead of her statement. It was easy to speculate when there were no facts to contain your wild thoughts, but he gave it a go in any case. A village like this one was remote. It was unlikely that anything would be discovered, and by the time it was discovered, it would be too late. If this was an action on behalf of an individual, what made more sense than doing something like this in the middle of nowhere? You couldn't test something like this in Ellothorien, or anywhere else that Skandra was aware of. At least not without having all manner of unwelcome attention coming down on your head. Was this the work of the man in blue? Only there had been no light, just a black sphere. There hadn't been a black sphere the last time, had there?

Of course, it could have been naturally-occurring. But Skandra had never heard of something like this before. It seemed possible that it was created by the world itself, some reaction of environment and intruder, but what intruder? What reaction? And why, if this was possible, was this the first time it was happening? Was it the first time? Or just the first time it was happening in a sufficiently populous area? Someone would have noticed by now. Someone would have been the right kind of smart and cowardly. Just walking away from the scene so they could report on what they'd found.

It had to be the first time. It had to be the result of... something.

"He seemed a decent fellow," Skandra mused again. "Why would he...?"

It rose without warning. A passionate rumble in the bowels of the earth. Those heavy stones, nearly immovable, shifted when the rumbling increased in intensity. Skandra planted his feet carefully to avoid an incident of some kind. Yet it wasn't the rumbling in and of itself that concerned him. It was the cause of that rumbling.

A glance to his left. His right. The noise was near deafening. Then up.

"What the hell," Skandra barked, loud as he could. "Is that?"

One of those gray shapes in the sky, a blob of colorless terror, was shifting direction. Instead of circling above them it was spinning into a tighter spiral, closer to the ground. Of course, it was not doing so quickly, but one had only to follow its movements to see what was happening. Why in the hell was it changing now?

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the_holy_path
2010-09-14 09:52 pm UTC (link)

"Who seemed like a decent fellow?" Aeotha called over the sudden noise, she was shifting her stance to stay upright and staring at him. Had he met the person who created such a pathway before? He wasn't talking about Uathis because he'd said the person seemed to be decent. And Uathis was anything but decent. More like disgusting and annoying. There were a lot of worse words for the man, but Aeotha was busy trying to keep herself upright. She grabbed hold of his arm to steady herself and her fingers tightened up there when she followed his line of sight.

"It looks like it's trying to be a tornado!" Aeotha yelled over the noise. She could barely hear herself over all of this. She worried that it was going to end up picking up some of those rocks and then.. She held tighter to his arm. What if the rumbling got worse? Would they lose each other?

"Do you have any suggestions of something we can do to stop that? Did magic work before? Do you know?" Aeotha wasn't sure she wanted to try magic. What if it made it worse?

What if whatever that was saw them if she tried to use magic. Or this madness turned into something else.

"Didn't we make it change last time! Uaine did! We should stop thinking!" Aeotha was running out of ideas. She just held on and tried to keep herself from tumbling over.

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roll_the_bones
2010-09-15 05:11 pm UTC (link)

Skandra heard her questions, and it was as though something had been unlocked in his mind. This wasn't the same as before. Neither of them were dreaming this massive gray shapes up. From the vicious-seeming shape in the sky to the earth below, and the rocks upon rocks. To Aeotha, who seemed ready to incinerate the damned thing with magic. Skandra covered the distance between them in short hops. When he arrived, he caught her from behind - one arm around her waist, trapping her hands at her sides. The other hand when over her mouth to keep her from shouting. And there he stood, perfectly still, as the gray shape broke off in its cyclonic descent.

With eerie precision and slowness the shape began to move toward them. Aeotha struggled again to escape his grasp. Should have choked her out - she was going to get them killed. But instead of pausing where Aeotha's suppressed terror could be heard the gray shape simply passed over their heads. Despite the gray, shadow-less nature of the day it still managed to drench them in a darker shade of black before it escaped. Skandra turned to look over his shoulder, and follow where the thing was going. Seemingly still under its own influence, the gray shape slammed into the pile of stones.

Something... opened... in the front of it. Not a mouth. Really.

It didn't look like a mouth.

The stones were being scooped into the gray shape's mouth as it cut a lazy and winding path through those rocks. And then at last, when it apparently had enough, it began to climb once more into the thick air surrounding them. Skandra uncovered Aeotha's mouth with a sharp and quick motion. Hand was wet. Apparently, with all her struggling, she'd managed to spit on his palm. At least she hadn't bitten him.

Skandra wiped his palm on her shoulder. Slowly, and with great pleasure.

"That was a space between worlds," Skandra spoke in a low voice, against her ear. "This is a world all its own, just like ours. You can't dream it out of existence. Hell, I doubt your magic will even work here. Wherever we are, we're probably far from Lorien."

Although, how far did one have to go to escape a goddess?

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the_holy_path
2010-09-15 07:49 pm UTC (link)

Aeotha twisted in terror and tried her best to escape him, or at least get the words out for a spell, but neither happened. Instead she was bound there, by his arms, and kept from unleashing everything in her arsenal. She could only watch in terror and for one brief moment Aeotha honestly thought he was going to be the end of both of them, but then the beast, or thing, or whatever it was passed harmlessly over them and Aeotha felt almost limp in his arms. Still terrified, but safe for now. When he finally released her hand her mouth was still open, only this time it was simply to breath.

They were alive. They were not scooped up like those rocks and Skandra was speaking again. She'd never once had someone treat her the way Skandra treated her. One moment he had his arms around her and telling her it would be alright, that.. that it was over. The next he was half smiling as he wiped his hand off one her robes. Being angry with him was as easy as breathing sometimes, but her heart wasn't in it. Not after.. Not after everything. Aeotha was just taking deep breaths and trying to make sense of this place. Both were difficult.

"No." She whispered. "There isn't anywhere I can go where it would not work, and saying such is.." She paused. How did she know that? Did she really wish to argue it?

"She's only as far as I allow her to be, should I push her from my heart then my magic would never work, but I.." Aeotha twisted against his arm.

"This isn't the time." She was staring back at him as much as she could.

"How could we be on another world, Skandra. How could we be so far from our own.. None of this.. you spoke of a man. Who was it? Would he create something like this.. did he do it before? How did you get back, how did you stop this?"

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roll_the_bones
2010-09-15 08:54 pm UTC (link)

There weren't any good options. Skandra imagined he could take his time studying those gray things, maybe even ride one to new heights, but they didn't seem to notice anything around them. If they had eyes, those eyes were well-hidden. How could a thing go where it needed to go without eyes? He'd heard that there were fish in the sea who only had one eye, or none at all, but these weren't fish. Were they? Another question for another time. He wasn't going to find out one way or the other today. That was really what he needed to take away from all of this. And Aeotha was right. This wasn't the time.

"Maybe it's right next door to us, and we just don't see it?" Skandra raised his brows at her comically before he started out.

Hard steps. The trembling of the earth had ceased. They were growing closer still to that curving gray boundary, an obstacle of stone that would have to be surmounted if they were going to make any progress. Every so often the Immortal would glance to the right, to the left, and behind. Shantar had a habit of showing up when he was least expected and least wanted. This might well be one of those times. And if it was, Skandra didn't want to miss the old man because he was thinking about rocks or dead bodies. How did the dead body - none of this was making any gods-damned sense.

Skandra wanted to know.

"Come on," he waved her forward rudely, but did not look behind him. "I'm thirsty as hell and I have a fucking headache. Don't want to stand around debating things with you. Let's get the hell out of here, and I'll explain everything on the way, okay?"

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