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