numenviscera (numenviscera) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2020-07-30 13:00:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | #january 2018, carson, carson x vex, vex |
Who: Carson & Vex
Where: Other side
When: Day one?
Status: Complete
Warning: Ew
Vex stood still while everything around him was chaos, like a solid rock in the midst of fast forwarded video. It took him a long time to shake off that shock of going from being a part of everything to being severed from it. He could have killed Lem, for all he knew he'd already killed Nic, the monsters around him were not from His God, they were just monsters. He closed his eyes and listened to the screaming, waiting for the punishment to come for him but it didn't. Something slithered around his feet in the fog and he was finally jolted out of his stupor, opening his eyes to really look.
This place was hell. There was really no better word for it. No fields of flesh, no pegasus, no divine vision. It was all fog, decaying organic matter and large shadows slithering around. He looked up to where one of those things was still crushing a human body and it was a strange feeling to be grateful that it wasn't anyone he recognized. He swallowed dryly, knowing that if these things didn't kill him, whatever he was breathing in would sooner or later. It felt thick in his throat and nostrils, already in his system doing God only knew what damage and he could too easily imagine something like radiation sickness shutting his organs down. For now he was alive though, alone in the clearing because everyone else had run away. It was just him, the dead man and the monsters. Maybe it was the fact he stood still that saved him, or maybe it was dumb luck. He took a slow step backwards, kept his gaze steady on the towering horror in front of him as he took another and then slowly slid behind a tree, leaning against the gross trunk, unsure why he wasn't actively dying yet.
I am going to die here. The thought was the clearest he'd had in months, this knowledge was his own and not something planted into his head by outside forces like the names he'd suddenly known just days prior. This was visceral, this was his body telling him he was going to die. The monsters knew he was there and he wasn't one of them anymore. Whatever task they had given him he had failed and for the first time in a long time, Vex did not feel special. He was still alive only because they were toying with him, maybe his willingness to die made him less fun to kill. Either way, he kept moving slowly. One step at a time, from one tree to another, numbness overwhelming whatever fear and sadness he might have otherwise felt.
He had no sense of time and he had a feeling time wasn't terribly accurate in a place like this anyway. It felt like hours and minutes all at once that he kept moving, never feeling like he was getting away from the danger. It seemed to follow him, surround him, like this whole place was danger. The first thing he saw that wasn't of this world was the werewolf and he stopped, comforted in some twisted way that he wasn't alone. He would rather die by a werewolf, he decided. It'd be quick and brutal and warm and if the wolf had already seen him, he was as good as dead anyway. So he stood still again and watched the hulking shape as it moved. Once upon a time, not long ago, a werewolf would have been the most terrifying thing he would ever lay eyes on. Now it just looked small compared to everything else.
For the first time ever, wolf-Carson was aware. Every time he’d transformed before, his consciousness had faded down to nothing, all vestiges of humanity temporarily erased by the huge driving force of an alien instinct. All the werewolf knew was hunger and rage and the way its blood sang when it ran at top speed through the woods. But now, this time ... parts of him that were really him were still there. He’d still been ragey and fear of this new world had driven him to defend himself against the monsters that had surrounded them. He’d killed a few of the smaller ones, and found that their blood tasted horrible, like black and rot. Not good to eat. The people that scattered ... he knew some of them. Remembered their essence, if not their names. Knew they weren’t good to kill. So he’d run into the woods that weren’t his.
The thoughts he had weren’t quite human but they weren’t all wolf either. This new world was dizzying and disorienting with smells and sounds that he’d never experienced before. But Carson knew where he was -- the other side of an invisible wall that was everywhere and nowhere at once -- and he vaguely understood why. They’d had to save everyone, and Carson had had to save Jules. Something must have gone wrong, and now here he was. He didn’t know why he had any control over himself at all, but he was glad for it.
He smelled Vex before he saw him, and the recognition was strong. He knew Vex, he’d spent time in Vex’s basement and even if he’d been unconscious and not himself, the smell was perfectly familiar. Familiarity was good in a place like this. Carson spotted the man and saw that he’d been spotted as well. One alarm bell in his head rang -- must not be seen, eat whatever looks at you -- but it was surprisingly easy to ignore. He lowered his head as he moved closer to Vex with his bouncing three-legged gait. Carson gave a soft whine and stopped several feet away, then plunked his ass down. He wasn’t a threat, and Vex should know that.
Vex had geared up to see his oncoming death as a relief and when the wolf sat down, he almost felt disappointed. It was an odd thing to feel, especially mixed in with relief and gratitude and he slowly closed the gap between them, hands raised up to show he too meant no harm. He still had his gun but even that didn't seem like it was capable of hurting anything out in these woods, not even Carson in his current, bulking form. "Carson, are you in there?" he whispered when he was just a couple of feet away, so close he could reach out and touch and he wanted to, to feel that soft fur under his hands, something other than the decay and filth of the world they were currently occupying. A werewolf would have ripped him to shreds now and he didn't know why this one didn't but if Carson was in control, if this world was somehow different, then that changed everything. The thought did occur to him that it was still the wolf, just smarter and eager to tear into him but the ongoing panic flitting inside him like a trapped bird had very little to do with that potential danger. Everything else was just So Much, the wolf was a sanctuary regardless of whether it killed him or not.
Carson could smell the fear on Vex, but that smell was kind of all around anyway, like this place was made of fear. Or there’d been enough of it from all those poor humans in the thick air to permeate. The man wasn’t running away though, even kept approaching him. Carson had known Vex was brave -- or just crazy, but that line was blurry sometimes -- and he was as glad as he was capable of being that it was coming through now. Carson was afraid too, as this place was bigger and scarier than he was, and he wanted some company. A pack. Safety in numbers. The words were a little jumbled in his brain, like his wolf-mind couldn’t quite parse them out, but he knew his name and that was enough. He lowered his head a bit and stretched it toward Vex, big nose sniffing the air between them before he let out a soft little whine. Carson was in there more than he’d ever been before, at least. He didn’t know why, he just knew he didn’t want to rage and kill, he wanted to connect.
Vex didn't think he could ever feel relief in this place but it was there now, somewhere deep under the rushing river of other emotions, quiet and still but present. He actually smiled a little, stepped closer and let his head thud against the great wolf's head. "Thank God," he whispered. It might not mean much in the long term but it somehow felt more poignant than actually connecting with another human being would. Then again, Vex loved wolves, he was half disappointed now that he hadn't actually been infected when the werewolf scratched him and despite all the bullshit he was dealing with - this was kind of cool. Like a very last awesome thing before this place suffocated him. "You're with me," he told Carson and reached up to pet his shoulder, his eyes a little wet when he pulled back. It was only then he saw the corpses around, the spray of what might be blood if it wasn't so dark. Carson had slaughtered some of those things and Vex felt proud, like he'd had something to do with it. Maybe he had a little bit because he'd kept him safe on the full moons. "Good job."
There was relief in Carson too, the subtle sense of a tiny relaxation. He had company now, a pack to look after, even if he could barely understand what Vex said. The approval in the last sentence was easy enough to read though, and he gave a soft huff through his nose. Carson didn’t like killing them because they tasted awful, but it wasn’t about killing for food, not yet. Killing was just going to have to be part of survival here, until ... well, until it changed. He couldn't quite remember how that could happen, he just knew that it had to if they ever wanted to go back home. And Carson knew for sure he wanted to go back home. Nothing about this place was right. He sniffed at Vex’s chest, then nudged his chin with his big muzzle and stood up again. They couldn’t stay still for long, they had to find somewhere safer to hide. Carson’s head swiveled around once or twice, his sensitive nose sampling the air, then he picked a direction and started that way, glancing back to make sure Vex was following him.
Vex felt a whole lot safer now that he had snagged himself a werewolf companion and that feeling was just cemented when Carson sniffed the air. He could see things Vex couldn't, smell things he couldn't - though Vex wondered if he could really smell a damn thing with how stale and thick the air was all around them. "I thought you were out to get me," he muttered quietly, looking around as they walked. "Before this. Something poisoned my mind, made me the bad sort of crazy. I thought you were the enemy but it turns out that I was the enemy. I'm okay now though, you know. I kinda wish I wasn't." Maybe if he was still insane he'd feel like he belonged here but no, he didn't want that either. It was good to have his mind back even if it hurt. Lies were comforting perhaps but they were still lies and Vex was a proponent of truth. "No, I'm glad I'm okay but fuck this place." He was more talking to himself than Carson at this point and he watched the wolf's body language closely for any sign of distress or lurking danger, keeping his voice low and droning until he stopped talking and started silently following.
The smells here were definitely warped, but they were there, underneath the thick blanket of not-quite-rot that covered everything. Carson could smell the weird trees, could smell the hints of living creatures around them, most of them small and burrowing for now. He smelled the sharp scent of rusted metal too, and that was what he was leading them toward. Rust meant metal which meant civilization. What he couldn’t pick up on was running water, which was distressing to his instincts. Carson wasn’t thirsty but that wouldn’t last forever, surely. No water was Bad. He wished he could communicate that to Vex, but he couldn’t think of how to. The human words washed over him, most of their meaning lost to his simplified understanding, but Carson felt like he got the gist of it. Vex wasn’t the same as he’d been on the other side of the doorway. He was back to being like basement-Vex. Normal. Carson knew he himself was not normal, neither human-normal nor wolf-normal, but he was glad that he wanted to do more than kill now. He paused every now and then to sniff around and listen with his ears swiveling, but continued to lead Vex until they reached the road. Or what was the road in their world. The broken asphalt and rusted cars made it seem much older than it had been back there, but maybe things rotted faster here. Carson gave a little whine and looked in the direction of town.
Whatever comfort Vex might have felt at finding an actual road in this hellscape was massively overshadowed by the state of it. The cars looked old, the road itself like something out of a post apocalypse movie and Vex doubted there was anything in the vehicles they'd find useful. He'd be remiss not to check though so that's where he started. "Hold on, buddy," he muttered, gesturing at Carson just in case he couldn't understand speech. "Wanna check these." His assessment had been correct, there was nothing of any worth inside the cars, even the big van he recognized as some mockery of his own van didn't have any of the things in it that he'd left behind on the other side. It was just a twisted reflection, nothing more. Some of the cars were so rusty that they had no floors anymore, Vex wasn't sure what he'd been hoping to find but he didn't bother checking all the cars because it became clear pretty fast they held nothing for him. "There might still be a town," he said though he didn't know what he was hoping to find there. At least they knew the direction - unless all the cars were facing the wrong way in some more twisted reflection-like mockery. "You wanna head there?" He pointed to the direction Wolf Carson had been staring at, giving him a questioning look.
Carson stood guard while Vex looked in the cars, every sense hyper alert as he waited for danger to descend on them. The cars didn’t smell like people anymore -- Carson knew that wasn’t right somehow, they should smell like humans, but he took it as just another sign that things here were very wrong. He looked at Vex when the man spoke again, his yellow eyes keen and struggling to understand. It was such a frustrating feeling, to recognize the words but not be able to decipher them, like language had lost most of its meaning in his mind. The internal dictionary might be gone or harder to read, but Carson understood a question when he heard it. Vex was pointing toward town, so Carson knew what he was asking. It seemed like the only answer to Carson, so he didn’t hesitate to start walking that way. It was a few miles, and he had no idea what they would find when they got there, but checking was better than staying still out in the open. That was how you got eaten.
Under different circumstances Vex would have wanted to stay within the tree line for some shelter and the ability to hide. In this place the trees themselves felt tainted and as if they were about to become animated and attack. Vex had never thought he could be so disgusted by trees but here they were, there was something so fundamentally wrong with this place that everything was affected. He couldn't help but wonder if the humans lost in this world would end up the same, tainted and twisted regardless of whether they were alive or dead. He was grateful the wolf was keeping a slower pace than he was capable of, letting Vex keep up. It helped to not be alone especially after he'd seen what Carson was capable of. "I wonder if there's an ocean here," he whispered and he almost hoped not. The woods were bad enough.
It seemed that the less he tried to understand, the more Carson actually did. Like thinking too hard about the words got them all messed up in his brain. He caught the word ‘ocean’ though, and immediately thought of deep deep dark and caves that no one from the land had ever seen, and what might be hiding there in this sort of place. If the air was full of this sort of horror already, he had to think the deep water would be worse. Maybe all the water would be worse, and they would die of thirst before anything else got to eat them. Carson let out a soft whine that conveyed his thoughts on that matter, keeping his eyes and ears and nose peeled for any danger around them.
"Yeah," Vex replied because that little whine did a good job of conveying how he himself felt about it. They didn't need words, Carson was like a dog only stronger and likely more intelligent by the looks of it. Or maybe he wasn't, dogs were plenty smart already and maybe his human mind wasn't quite there right now. There were ways to find out, Vex supposed, but it would have to wait until they found shelter. If they found shelter. He couldn't help but think something horrible and too big to be fought off might come out from the trees at any moment and there was nowhere to run to. Carson might get away but Vex was human and no human could outrun something like that. "Let's hope not," he whispered and decided to be quiet from here on out. They were already so vulnerable and loud - or at least they felt loud, unknown decaying flora crunching beneath their feet - there was no need to add his voice to the mix and risk luring something their way.