vallo

( If at first you don't succeed, die, die again. )

“What’s up, sluts?” A voice that could only belong to a degenerate fratboy pharma-bro who got into and out of university on his daddy’s money rings out through the speakers in every room.

You’ve only just gotten a look at the slab in front of you, calling to you, giving you a sense of what it can help you do when everything freezes. That awful voice is silenced–everything is silenced. People around you stop moving. There is one door open, and it goes into a lonely island of rock in the Void.

“Come in.” You’ve heard this voice before, coming from the radio. Low and weary, it seems to echo with the lonely music of creatures long extinct and the vastness of space and time.

As you step through, you find yourself alone on a floating island of black stone.

…or maybe not alone. In a swirl of ash, a man appears. You may have glimpsed him before, in a strange portrait or when you invited him in for a glass of whiskey and called him Dad.

“I can’t keep you here for long, but I have a gift for you: time. Time to plan, to talk to each other here, where you won’t be interrupted. It should last…” The man grimaces. “I’ve lost track of what time means anymore. An hour? A day? A century? They all feel the same to me now. Suffice it to say that it won’t last as long as you’d like, but it will give you a head start on the idiot and his idiot army. Good luck.”

The man disappears once again, leaving you alone with your phone, where the screen reads:

VOID CHAT

( The Third Loop: Chat and Discovers for IC Discussion )

WRECK HIM NADJA.

As you escape through the door in Butler’s Pantry, first there is darkness.

Then there is sound: a deep voice, no longer echoing with the pain of the leviathans, no longer disconnected from time and space. “Thanks,” it says.

Light filters in at last, and you open your eyes (did you close them? You can’t remember) on the room where you went to sleep before this madness gripped you.

You’re home.

I just had the weirdest dream.

[COLT VAHN]

You good?

I'm ready to treat the whole lot of you at Galahd's tonight. I think you all deserve it. Who wants in?

Filtered: Eliot Waugh

Hey. Do you still want me to come over and crash or are you going to want a raincheck?

I'm okay with whatever you pick.

[Filtered away from Fen]

Can anyone tell me if there are places that offer horseback riding to the public? Not lessons, just riding for fun/leisure.