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endangered-liaison · 6 years ago

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Bliss

"Test one."

Wyda stands in her loft. A few fulms away from her are three buckets of water, just in case she sets something on fire. Again.

She raises a hand, flexing her fingers and reaching out to check the laces of her glove.

"Applying somatic components with extrapolated Nymian geometries."

She isn't sure why she's describing her process aloud. It organises her thoughts, she supposes. And gods know she needs them organised.

She twists her hand, drawing a shape in the air with her fingertip. The ring on her finger starts to softly glow. She concentrates, finishing the motions...then pushes forwards.

A barrier projects around her, bright and brilliant. It shimmers against her, like a second skin.

She concentrates, and it seems to hold firm.

She starts to grin, happiness overcoming her at her success, and goes to make a noise of delight--

She can't breathe.

Oh.

Well, bollocks.

She tries to take a breath, and it's as if the air around her simply isn't there. The barrier ripples and warps, and she tightens her fingers. Dispel. Dispel!

It doesn't budge.

Esuna?

She tries to groan (before realising that's a waste of valuable air), then twists her hands. Presses one palm against the other wrist, feeling the geometry she has stitched in her gloves.

The barrier collapses around her and she wheezes in a deep, painful breath.

"T-test one verdict: ensure barrier reacts only to air aether, rather than air itself." She punches herself in the chest, coughing a little.

_ _ _

If someone had asked Wyda where she thought her year would go, she would've said...working on arcanotechnology, or perhaps focusing on decorating her house.

She wouldn't have said that she'd be studying and clumsily translating an ancient Nymian tome on Mhachi aether use, gifted to her by Xanadu Mol.

But here she is.

The section she's focused on describes soul stones. The Nymians had access to the means of creating plenty of Scholar soulstones, but...Black Magic stones were harder to come by.

The way in which Mhach made use of their techniques is...foggy, at best, from her external research. Soul gems for Black Mages are rare, and surely there'd be at least a handful around as relics if they had been used by the Mhachi soldiers and battlemages.

But...the author of the tome believed he could make a copycat gemstone.

A Black Magic soulstone that would attune to them, even when they were already using the stone of a Scholar. Using the enemy's techniques against them. Gaining their powers.

She stares at one line in particular. At the description of how to piece the delicate object together.

"...I can make it."

_ _ _

"Test four," she says, stepping on a half-burnt piece of paper before trying to kick it away. It sticks to her boot, wet as it is, so she settles for peeling it off and frowning at it to try and decrypt whatever it previously said.

"Nymian geometries are unreliable to extrapolate with only incomplete data, and seem to rely on a Fairy contained within a soul stone for full potential to be reached. Predictable, albeit...disappointing."

She rolls her neck. "I'm instead progressing to the topic discussed in detail within the Nymian tome. The book concerns Mhachi techniques in warfare."

Wyda approaches the wall, looking at a handful of translated pages she's pinned there.

"On the scale of an empire, their aggressive use of aether would create significant aetheric imbalance throughout the star. However, on the scale of a single woman...such techniques may be able to be harnessed."

She readies herself to cast a spell, then pauses again.

"...Mhachi Black Magic was used almost exclusively for destructive spells. It is possible that there will be no way of using the aether produced on any naturally beneficial magicks."

Hence the other two buckets of water.

"Test four. Somatic and verbal elements with Mhachi techniques. Beginning with destructive magicks, to limit differences from anecdotal accounts."

She raises her hands, twisting them together. Electrical sparks starts to bounce between her fingers.

"Thundaga," she states, loud and clear, and points an arm at the bucket.

Thunder shoot up her hand, and she collapses to her knees as every muscle in her arm tenses and stays tensed, curling in on her chest. She yelps, gritting her teeth so hard it hurts.

"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."

The shocks finally subside, and she collapses against the floor, gasping for breath. Her arm shakes, but otherwise stays totally taut. The muscles refuse to budge, and she's quietly thankful that she reached out with the arm that didn't have her ring on.

The pain, slowly, begins to subside.

"S-so that's why they always used staves."

_ _ _

Wyda's hand is still shaking a little from the earlier shocks as she pieces together one of the most delicate and valuable objects she can imagine.

She's engraved a Mhachi rune on a dark, deep purple amethyst. She's wound golden wire around it, binding it tightly to a single unaspected aether shard. And, slowly, the picks up the glass vial in front of her. Brave had been using them to make valves, and had ordered a handful more than she needed owing to their fragility.

Now, however, they are the perfect size for her improvised false soul stone.

Placing the object within the glass tube is easy. After that, it's simply a matter of sealing it. She takes a few breaths, calming herself.

She begins to channel aether into the tube. She feels it thrumming with energy.

Building. Empowering.

She can feel a barrier, like a wall, blocking her path. She pushes her aether against it. She just needs to break through.

She can do this.

She pushes as hard as she can against it, feeling her aether pulse and skitter over the imagined barrier. Her hand shakes.

A shock travels from the vial to her ring, and Wyda yelps, dropping the vial in alarm.

The glass shatters on her desk, leaving her with a sad-looking failed soulstone.

She pokes at it a little, feeling the way the wire is untangling from the crystal and the amethyst.

She sighs. "Well, it was worth a try."

As she gets to her feet, intent on finding a brush to clean up the shattered glass, she doesn't notice her ring glowing a little brighter than before.

_ _ _

"Experiment five."

Wyda twirls her new thaumaturge's staff between her fingers. Then pauses. Frowns.

"Wait, was I saying test before? I was, wasn't I?"

She raises her staff, feeling the weight of it and the thrum of the crystal at the tip.

If she's understanding things right, resonance between the crystal and the user can create powerful, unique effects.

She likes that word. Resonance.

"Test five. Experiment five. Whatever." She readies herself for another attempt at the thunder spell from the previous test, only for her arm to twinge slightly from the memory of the previous pain.

"...On second thought. Test five will not be re-attempting the Thundaga experiment--" as she says the word of the spell, she feels another thrum from the crystal, and her eye widens. "--that's alarming."

She waits for the thrumming power to die down. It does, after a few moments.

"...As I was saying. Test five will be attempting to create an Aetherial Well. A Black Magic technique Nym theorised was responsible for Mhach's vast magical power."

The Nymians had been obsessed with the theory of the technique. Or, at the very least, the ones who wrote a book on Mhachi aetherology were obsessed with the theory of the technique. There are no less than three chapters devoted solely to it.

If she can master it...she thinks she might understand Mhachi spellcasting. And even if she can't understand that, if she can master Aetherial Wells then they’ll singlehandedly solve a lot of her aetheric issues anyway. A win-win, in her eye.

She raises her staff. Concentrates on her breathing techniques, as the book told her to focus on.

She feels for the font of aether in her chest. For her body's own natural reservoir. And, with the crystal in her staff attuned to it, she reaches inwards.

Nothing happens.

She frowns, annoyed, and feels her attention on her own aether slipping. Damn it, no. Okay. Breathing techniques.

Calm.

A breath in.

Clear your mind.

A breath out.

Feel.

There.

A breath in.

Reach out.

Find the crystal.

A breath out.

Reach in.

She feels her aether unravel through her body and she gasps.

It's there. It's there, and...it's all around her. Is it truly so easy? To take it? To amplify her power?

She feels the crystal. She senses the aether around her, in the land. In the water. In the air.

She takes a breath, and tastes frost on her tongue.

Sparks flicker along her fingertips.

Fire licks at the base of her spine.

It's so much.

There's so much power, all around her. Within her. More than she gives herself credit for. All she needs to do is just...entwine the two, and she can--

It hits her.

Her legs give out from under her and she collapses to her knees, heaving in breath. Her free hand moves in front of her face, gasping and pressing her fingertips against her forehead.

Her grip on the staff is white-knuckled and rough as she tries to hold herself together, feeling the aether in her chest grow and blossom from its weakened origins to something vast. Something bottomless and powerful and amazing.

It's beautiful.

It's wonderful.

It's impossible.

It's...

It's too much.

It hurts.

Make it stop.

Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop.

make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop

_ _ _

Wyda becomes aware, dimly, of a clattering noise.

It's too loud. Her head is pounding, and she feels dizzier than she can ever remember being.

She opens her eye.

She's on the floor of her loft, she thinks.

It's surprisingly comfortable.

She tries to move, and finds her limbs feel heavy and leaden, like she just ran a marathon. She grunts and settles for turning her head to one side.

She dropped her staff down her stairs. She can see it at the bottom, mocking her.

That would explain the clattering noise.

She swallows, hard, and tries her hardest just to breathe evenly.

After a few minutes, she thinks she's regained enough feeling in her fingers and toes to climb her way to her feet, feeling the whole room sway like she's on a ship.

She manages it, after a couple of tries, and staggers, leaning hard against the wall. Swallows back bile. Eyes up one of the buckets.

She closes her eye until the room starts spinning a little less. Until her stomach settles.

Then, she starts to make her way downstairs.

She still has work to do, after all.

_ _ _

"Test six."

She blinks until her vision clears. The dizziness from her previous experiment is proving annoyingly persistent.

"Thunder experiment, attempt two. With a staff, I'm hoping the technique will prove more effective."

And less painful, she notes to herself.

She takes a few calming breaths, then raises her free hand towards the crystal at the head of her staff. Sparks flicker between it and her palm, warm and ticklish.

"Thundaga," she murmurs, and points the staff towards one of the buckets of water.

A thunderbolt cracks from her staff, deafeningly loud, and strikes the unfortunate object.

The water superheats and explodes outwards, shattering the wooden bucket into a fine haze of sawdust, splinters and scorching water droplets. Wyda staggers backwards, eye wide as she takes in the devastation.

A few droplets of superheated water hit her hand and cheeks, but she barely notices.

She blinks a few times.

Waits for her ears to stop ringing.

...She's definitely going to have to change her bedsheets.

She blinks a little more, and looks from the staff in her hands to the shattered, steaming base of the bucket.

Huh.

"...Experiment successful!"

_ _ _

Wyda thinks she might have overdone it.

She feels aetherstarved. The dizziness from before has subsided, but now she just...feels her head pounding like a drum.

Thundaga might have been a little beyond her aetheric capabilities, limited as they are.

Especially one with *that* level of power.

It's dark outside, and she's leaning against her desk. She buries her head in her hands, groaning and massaging her scalp.

She should have an ether potion to stabilise herself. It's not good to sit around like this, drained.

But every movement has her head pounding.

...Okay. She can do this. She just needs to take some deep breaths, first. Then she can get her ether, and stabilise her mana, and recover herself back to normal.

She closes her eye, and pulls her hands slowly from her face.

Calm.

She just needs to be calm.

A breath in.

Clear her mind.

A breath out.

Feel.

There we go.

A breath in.

Relax.

Reach out.

It hits her. The same power from earlier.

The same strength.

The source of aether inside her feels huge. It feels like she's drowning in it all.

It feels...

It feels....

Her eye opens, and she starts to smile.

It feels good.

#ffxiv #ffxiv RP #Mhach #Hyrtwyda Eyhafrynwyn #Stars and Shadow

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safestsephiroth · 6 years ago

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FFXIVWrite #12: Fingers Crossed - Lacina Lune

Lacina Lune's work for the Garleans was just a memory, now. They had abandoned her. Couldn't handle perfection. It didn't matter. She had no further need or use for them. She was one target away from closing out her perfect record, and that was what truly mattered.

She checked the fuel lines on her gunscythe.

In the meantime, she had taken up smaller jobs, to afford the information she needed on where her target had fled to after faking his death. To her luck, she had managed to find several clients willing to hire an assassin. She had yet to figure out why they all seemed so trepidatious about her. More than one prospective client had turned her down not long after she quoted her price.

Soft music playing over the orchestrion. A piece which was popular among Ishgardian nobility some time ago. The recording had been made in a private manor. She could hear the individual claps of the audience members.

Perhaps she was asking for too much? She had calculated the cost based on what a talented craftsman would make in a trade. She was, after all, a perfect assassin. This meant she would be worth the same price as a perfect carpenter, or perfect blacksmith. Their hesitation struck her as an impenetrable mystery.

She opened the crate. For an hour, five hundred rounds would be sufficient. She had no reason to expect more than a hundred targets would present themselves. Her shots did not miss. It was possible there would be dangerous, powerful creatures involved. They may take more than one shot to fell. Her client was unknown to her. Perhaps this was a trap. It did not matter. Five hundred rounds was sufficient.

The Thanalan desert would be dry. Irritatingly so. She did not like what it did to her sinuses. She would need plenty of supplies to survive long enough. How strange a contract. Not a specific target, but a specific location. She would scout the specific location a day in advance. Drive wooden stakes into the ground as markers. Get herself used to the size of the field she would keep clear.

She shut the crate once more. She needed more supplies.

She made her way to the market. Bustling. Full of life. Teeming with shoppers and merchants. She fingered the knife in her sleeve. Walked with a slow pace. The experienced pickpockets left her alone. The inexperienced would have found themselves stopped in short order - if they had dared to test her.

She met a merchant selling water. Bought several jugs.

"Going to the desert, my lady?"

"Why?"

"Water is quite essential to-"

She heard a voice. Plucked from the crowd. A singer. Soft. Performing for someone, secluded in an alleyway.

The woman's perfect use of vibrato pierced Lacina's ears and drilled into her mind.

She dropped a fistful of coin on the desk. "Hold it." And hurried through the crowd.

"Wait-!"

She was already gone. The alley - not far - she could hear - the singing stopped.

"Well? What do you think?"

A man's voice: "I think you've a career on the stage, my darling. I'll speak with my man in the Troupe, and I'm sure you'll be a shoe-in for an audition. As long as you can sing there just as well as you did here, then you're all but guaranteed a job. I'll keep my fingers crossed."

Lacina froze in the entrance to the alleyway. Fingers crossed? What did that mean? Was that a musical term she had not known before? That was impossible. Wasn't it? She knew everything about music. Didn't she?

Her heart pounded in her ears. More to learn. More to know. This Troupe. Who were they? Where were they? Would she be able to see them? If all the musicians they hired were of this quality, she could listen. It would be perfect. It would be thrilling. Intoxicating. It would-

"Excuse me." An elezen woman. Lacina blinked.

"Huh?"

"Could you move, please? You're blocking the alley." The same voice. Speaking? This was the same woman? Her hands - weathered. Worn. Callused at the fingertips. An instrument-player as well as a singer. Her face - plain, but symmetrical. A hint of dirt at her cheek. That could be washed off. Why wasn't it? A singer should present herself- "Please, miss?"

"Sorry." She turned, pressed against the wall. Stared. The clothes - plain. Simple. A mix of drab colors that showed more effort than was normal for an outfit of the poverty-stricken. Lacina looked down the alleyway. Where was the man? She had to know. What was 'fingers crossed'? A magical technique? Some spells had somatic-styled components. Perhaps it was a spell. But a singer so talented wouldn't need a spell.

She looked.

The singer was almost gone.

"Wait!" She barked it out. Tone unsteady. "You mustn't use magic. They may disqualify you. An audition of music. You are capable enough. You do not need such things. The risk is not worth taking."

The woman stopped. Turned. "I'm... sorry?"

"The audition. Do not let him deceive you. Magic will lower your chance of acceptance. I am certain of it."

"Um. Thank you for your advice. I'm going to go home now."

"Yes. This is appropriate."

The woman walked off. Lacina rushed into the alleyway. The man had left out the back. She clenched her jaw. Slammed the back of her fist against a wall, knocking a layer of dust free. "Where is he?" She charged through the alleyway. Winding paths - no good. The dirt had most recently been disturbed - she followed. Left. Straight. Left. Right. Straight. Straight. Right. Another Ul'dahn street.

Where? Where?

She closed her eyes. A cacophany of voices, all talking. She clenched her jaw. A vein at her temple pulsed. Her eyes shot open. She marched into the street. What was she to do? She spotted a tall man carrying a staff slung over his back. A spellcaster of some kind. He would know.

She followed the man. For twenty minutes. Until, finally, he stopped.

"May I help you, miss?" The voice was old. Gravelly. She had not realized his apparent age.

"Yes. I must know what crossing fingers is used to do."

His eyes narrowed. "What?"

"A spell. What sort of spell requires crossing your fingers. A man crossing his fingers for another. Why? What is it? I must prevent the spell being cast."

"...It's a good luck charm."

Her eyes widened. "Luck? There are spells which affect such a thing?"

"No, it's not a spell."

"Charms are not spells?"

"Some children think so, perhaps. Magic is not so simple or free. Academically speaking-"

"This does not interest me. I care only about crossed fingers. What do they mean?"

His nose crinkled. "Young girl, it is a way to wish someone 'good luck'. Or 'farewell'. And with that, I wish you farewell."

She stared, blankly, as he walked away.

She turned, and returned to the water merchant. Making a mental note:

Learn more about this... 'Troupe'.

After the job.

#lacina lune #ffxivwrite2019 #final fantasy xiv #ul'dah #thanalan

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punishandenslavesuckers · 6 years ago

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Mollymauk Tealeaf wakes up in a grave by the road ten years after he died. Things have gone a bit wrong since then and he might be the only one who can set things right… since it’s the Mighty Nein themselves who’ve gone wrong. AU: Where Molly comes back to yell at his super-powered Level 20 friends. (AO3 - part1) (AO3 - part 2) (AO3 - part3) (AO3 - part4) (AO3 - part5) (AO3-part6) (AO3-part7) (AO3-part8) (AO3-part9) (AO3-part10)

Mollymauk is getting accustomed to this teleporting thing.

He’s getting accustomed to a lot of things, really, like the dying. Like the constant apprehension painted in a thin, burning layer across the inside of his lungs. Like the taste of blood in the back of his throat and the way resurrection magic slithers through his body – like a climax but turned horribly inside out. Molly’s getting used to this dissociation now between his physical self and his soul as he’s pulled through reality from point A to point B. That tooth-click that keeps happening when he stops being nothing and exists again suddenly. That weird ‘pop’.

Molly pops back into being standing in what looks like a dim and unkempt professor’s study.

It’s a big room. There are long wood tables scarred with chemical and arcane fire. Books stacked and laid out everywhere, papers scrawled with shorthand that seems to slither on the parchment when Molly looks at it. The place smells of burnt ozone and there are fading white runes painted onto the flagstones beneath his boots. Suggesting to Mollymauk that Caleb’s pulled him somewhere very specific. He’d hazard it’s Caleb’s personal workshop by the vaulted ceilings literally top to bottom and wall to wall bookshelves stuffed and stacked with tomes.

Caleb Widogast is still gripping Molly’s hand. Like a man might have hold of a handle.

On immediate instinct, Molly tries to extract his hand. But Caleb doesn’t let go so they just stand there. Caleb is still just a little bit shorter than him, but his eyes are still lit from the inside by whatever power lives in him like a star dying behind his irises. He’s staring at Molly and as Molly watches, the blood and gore and the crushed pieces of dead insect that coat his skin begin to flake away, floating and peeling off like embers off a log until Caleb is whole and healed and his hand is hot around Molly’s knuckles.

Through his teeth, Molly says, “Let go of me.”

Caleb’s eyes seem to focus then, like he’d been staring at some other layer of reality until Molly’s voice brought him. His fingers unfurl and he watches Molly instantly back away three paces, massaging his hand where the wizard touched him, rubbing off whatever lingers in the ink and scarring. If he’s offended by this, he gives no outward sign.

“Don’t touch anything. I can’t promise the items here won’t hurt you.”

Molly tells him to go fuck himself in Infernal.

Caleb blinks, then says, “You say that a lot, ja?”

“Well, you haven’t listened to me yet and I really think you fuckin’ should,” Molly snaps, frantically looking around the room. There’s no visible exit, just a strange constant convergence of walls and shelves and acute to obtuse that don’t seem to quite follow the laws of geometry as Molly understand them. It makes the room simultaneously bigger and more claustrophobic. Molly finds breathing harder all at once. “What do you want from me?”

“To talk,” he says, “for now.”

Molly processing that for a minute.

Then snarls, “Are you out of your bloody mind?” When Caleb knits his brow, Molly waves his hands around. “Kidnapping me? You think holding me hostage is gonna do shit? I’m the magic undead teifling, you dumbarse. You can’t threaten me. I’m literally the most useless hostage you could take. What’re ya gonna do?” He puts on a sarcastic voice. “Kill me?”

“I don’t plan on it.”

Molly’s still got one hand around his own wrist, rubbing restlessly at the tattoo run over his knuckles. His fingers dig tight until the bones in his hand pulse with his own rabbiting heartbeat. His entire body feels wound too tight to take. Shaking to bolt or battle, but his hasn’t got any weapons now and he’s standing near enough to touch to a man that kills with one word. He consciously slows his breathing. Tells himself to stop bloody shaking while Caleb studies him head to foot. Incrementally. Like he’s committing details to memory.

“Will Caduceus be alright?”

“That cell has more air, if that’s what you mean.” Caleb circles to Mollymauk’s left. “I wouldn’t use a fire-based spell otherwise.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Molly steps right to keep the same distance between them.

“He won’t die,” Caleb says, still circling, forcing Molly to move so they’re slowly orbiting one another. Caleb never breaks eye contact and Molly’s heart keeps racing, panic telling him that, and just that, could be some somatic component in a spell. Caleb shrugs. “I don’t know if he’ll be okay. That’s a bad enchantment. It can, ah, affect people.” He waves a hand vaguely at his head. “You know, that way.”

“Torture spells are traumatizing?” Molly snaps. “Fascinating. Who knew?”

“You think Caduceus is so gentle.” Caleb’s brows lift. “So soft, ja?”

“No, he skewered a dragon and trades in man-eating beetles. I’ve met trolls that were less scary. That doesn’t mean I’m on your side.”

“Of course not.” Caleb stops to face Molly full on. “You’re on the side of those who raised you. It’s understandable.”

“Oi, bite me, Mr. Widogast. I was on your bloody side until you killed me on a whim and word.” Molly squares himself to the wizard. “Don’t try to play victim when you bring up demons and attack your friends without a kindness of warning. If you mean to make me see your reason in all this, I’m tellin’ you now it’ll be a hard fuckin’ sell.”

“I know,” say Caleb. “Mollymauk, I’m going to show you something, but you need to do a few things for me.”

“Ha!” Molly didn’t mean to laugh that loud, but he’s a little hysterical at this point. “I’m not doing fuck all. You can drag me around on a magic leash first.”

Caleb sighs, then waves a hand… and Molly starts to glow. Or rather, his mithril-chain shirt and his bracers start to glow. Also, the rings on his index finger and thumb. Also, the half-dozen charms hanging around his neck and the clasp around his right horn, and the empty sword sheathes at his hips. Molly is lit up all over, glowing from every magic source on his body which is – with Nott’s insistence – quite a lot of magical aid.

“Take all that off,” Caleb says, hand still shimmering with the detect magic charm.

Molly doesn’t move.

“I’m not identifying any of that shit,” Caleb says evenly. “Take all of it off.”

“Nott gave these to me.”

Caleb’s expression cracks. A slight widening in the eyes suddenly – not of surprise but hurt. Then it’s gone under a stern indifference and he tilts his head a little and raises his other hand, thumb pressed to his middle and index finger in the precursor to a snap.

“Last chance,” Caleb says.

“Nott gave all this to me,” Molly whispers, “to protect me from—”

Caleb snaps his fingers and the air behind him displaces as something massive just materializes in the space directly behind him. Molly jerks back, his hips hitting a worktable. The thing behind Caleb sort of… unfurls. A broad, muscular back shifts as gargantuan leather wings arch up and flare over the wizard’s tawny head. Blue hide, riddled in plates of scale, shimmers in the torch light. A long serpentine neck arches up and up until the beast turns giant predator-gold eyes to fix on Molly. Its skull is the size of a battle shield, its jaw long, draconic, and toothy. Talons big as coat hangers clack and scrap on the floor as what appears to be a bull-sized blue dragon rises up behind Caleb the way a hunting dog comes to quarry.

“Blue dragon wyrmling,” says Caleb, reaching up to pat the beast’s horrifying jaw. “They like magic. Frumpkin doesn’t get to play with anything magic in this form, you see. My work is too dangerous.”

“Caleb,” Molly starts to say, fingers, digging into the table edge behind him. “Don’t—”

Caleb says a word in Zemnian. On that command, his hulking familiar looses a joyous predator scream.

Then it lunges at Molly.

It tears past Caleb, so smooth it barely disturbs the wizard’s fine black and gold robes. Molly, to his credit, immediately hurdles the table, dive rolls, and comes up sprinting on the opposite end of the table. Frumpkin hits the table, missing Molly by inches, then it hits the ground behind him, claws scrabbling on the stone like an off-balance Labrador. Molly feels it on instinct when Frumpkin swipes at his back. He ducks right, going low, skidding, razor-sharp claws whipping through the air over his head.

But then he’s on the ground and Frumpkin is huge.

Frumpkin’s jaws snap closed on the back of Molly’s tunic and with a whip of his head, the hurls Molly against another long table like a cat slinging a mouse against a wall. He crashes through a pile of books which – wondrously – take flight and scatter like a flock of disturbed pigeons. It would be neat if a small dragon didn’t then slam Molly like a battering ram. The beast pins him under massive claws, landing so the pads of its feet are crushing Molly’s upper arms flat, his spine bent back over the edge of the table as Frumpkin the blue dragon wyrmling start to bite excitedly at the mithril chainmail beneath Molly’s tunic.

“CALEB!” His tunic shreds under eager dragon teeth. “FUCK! WHAT THE FUCK!?”

Frumpkin drives his massive bony head against Molly’s chest and instantly cracks two ribs. Molly still manages to scream. Then Frumpkin is grinding an anvil-heavy skull against him like a cat might shove its face in a pillow of catnip except it’s his fucking ribcage and stomach. Frumpkin snuffles at Molly’s skull, chewing lightly at the clasp clipped to his horn before giving that up as a back job and rearing back to study him.

Then Frumpkin’s jaws start to open, crackling with blue static, a long tongue lashing with sparks. Molly sees it coming but he can’t stop it. Frumpkin licks Molly’s neck which… you know, fucking electrocutes him. Molly chokes as a short, agonizing current rips through him, lashing every muscle in his body into a garrote-wire of tension before the current dispels into the wood and it’s over.

Molly isn’t conscious of Frumpkin getting off of him, only of hitting the floor and rolling onto his side, his entire body throbbing and his neck searing where the dragon-thing licked him. He smells burnt skin and ozone.

“Okay, ah, that was a bit much…” Caleb is saying. “Bad cat.”

“Fuck you,” Molly snarls, but it’s undercut with a sob. His entire chest pulses red rivers of fire with every breath.

He curls his one arm around himself and just lays there in a heap with his forehead pressed to the cool stone, tail wrapped around his body at the knee. He has one palm pressed to the floor near his waist, but he can’t find the strength to get up. Through the feverish glow of pain, he feels a hand touch his neck and that cold palm smooths from the hinge if his jaw, down the line of muscle to his clavicle. A slow bleed of magic slides through the gash, like pouring liquid salve into the wound and from there it travels down, down, spreading out inside his chest until the hairline cracks splintered through his ribs go cold as well. Soon, there’s no pain left. Just a numb buzzing in the nerves.

Molly lifts his head.

Pale blue eyes stare back.

“Are you going to take off your enchantments or do you want Frumpkin to try again?”

Molly shoves Caleb in the chest.

This knocks the wizard onto his butt. He didn’t seem to have expected that, because he just kind of drops on his ass and blinks. Surprised while his gigantic wyrmling familiar sniffs at his hair. Molly levers himself into a sitting position. Then he starts pulling the rings off his fingers, palming them, before reaching up to remove the clasp from his horn and the earrings that stave off cold. He unstraps the bracers, pulls the charms from around his neck and sets all this aside. Then he glares, gets to his feet, and turns his back on Caleb while he reaches up and tugs his shirt off over his head from the shoulders.

That way no one can see it while he wipes his eyes with the back of his hand.

Molly puts his ruined shirt on the table while he pulls the chainmail off, leaving on nothing but the thinner, sleeveless under-shirt he’s been using to pad the chainmail. The rings are still leaving marks in his skin. He’s not used to armor. Molly starts to pull his shredded tunic back on over his head when he feels Caleb start to move toward him again and –

Molly whips around, snarling, the words going Infernal in his throat: “Back off!”

Frumpkin the wyrmling starts to growl, but Caleb waves his quiet. There’s pause. So, Molly turns back around and finishes pulling his clothes back on. There’s an ache in his bounding heart now, a low panic like a current in his blood that makes him want to double over and start screaming for the frustration of it. The fucking unfairness and stupid cruelty of it. He straightens his shirt and pushes his hair out of his face, then turns to look at Caleb.

“What now?”

“That wasn’t intentional,” Caleb says.

“You sicced your giant bloody cat on me.”

“I warned you.”

“Oh. Well. Alright then. All’s forgiven.”

There’s a tense silence.

Then, “Follow me. Don’t try to run or Frumpkin will sit on you again.”

And then quite suddenly there’s an obvious doorway on the wall to Molly’s right. Caleb crosses the room and opens it, going through, not stopping to check if Molly follows. Probably because Frumpkin is now standing directly behind Molly, breathing static on his neck. Molly pauses to glance back up at the giant familiar. He literally has Molly’s cursed sword sheathes between his jaws like a grinning dog with a stick.

“Your boss is a bastard,” Molly says.

Frumpkin just blinks and nudges him in the shoulder.

“Fine.”

Molly follows Caleb.

Through the door is a long hallway, mostly featureless and should be cold for all the empty stone space, but the air seems to be magically regulated to a comfortable room temperature. The silence is broken only by the soft slap of boots against the floor and the terrible scraping clack of Frumpkin’s talons. They walk through the hall. Caleb keeps surreptitiously checking a dark metal pocket watch as they walk, but the face of it is blank and makes Molly’s eyes hurt to look at it directly.

“The others are looking for you,” Caleb says.

“You don’t seem worried. I would be.”

“I have time,” he says, pocketing the weird watch. “Jester’s young god still needs time.”

“Famous last words.”

Molly glances at a hanging tapestry on the wall nearby – a map of a land he doesn’t know. He’s certain now that he’s passed it a few times. He’s getting the impression that Caleb’s lair really does not obey any laws of physics and the only reason they’re moving through it at all has to do with the wizard himself. Frumpkin, once more, nudges at Molly’s shoulder. Like a border collie keeping a flock of one in line, confirming this really isn’t his first time playing guard dog to visitors.

“The others have told you I’m trying to end the world,” Caleb says.

“No.” Molly folds his arms across his chest, tail lashing anxiously around his boots. “They were very specific that’s not what you’re trying to do, just a possible side effect of what you’re trying to do. That’s what they told me.”

“Hmm,” Caleb says.

Molly feels a heat flare in his throat. “What?”

“I thought they’d lie a little more. I’m surprised.”

“Maybe you just think all your friends are against you when really they’ve been busy – you know – being crazy with grief or kidnapped by demi-gods. Which, by the way, I’m curious, did you try to get Fjord out of there?”

Caleb looks over his shoulder. “Of course. Did they tell you I didn’t?”

“No.” Molly rolls his eyes, leering for effect. “But you’re such a jackass right now…”

“No one could reach Fjord,” Caleb says plainly, blinking. “None of my magic meant anything in the face of that. Nothing short of a god could get close and the only god we had was Jester’s. Fjord was gone so long…” Caleb pauses. “I thought he’d be insane by the time we got him out or thralled to the Serpent.” Caleb’s eyes are unfocused, looking sidelong and away. “It seemed impossible he might still be him.”

Molly hesitates before saying, “Fjord’s stronger than you gave him credit for.”

“Maybe, or maybe he’ll turn on the others in due time. Jester has a blind spot for him. Always has. She would not accept that Fjord might be gone. She obsessed and no one could talk her down from it. Not Nott or Caduceus or anyone. Maybe Beau could have talked her down, but Beau was gone and Yasha was gone and so…” Caleb shrugs and looks forward again. “She was taken too.”

Molly tilts his head. “You say ‘taken’.”

“Yes. There’s a difference.”

“You sure?”

Caleb glances again at Molly. “Caduceus left me. He promised he’d never do that, but he did. He wasn’t taken by anything. Neither was Nott, but I don’t blame her. She was scared. I scared her.”

“You’re a moron,” Molly says.

“Thank you, Mollymauk. Nice to have you back.”

“You’re both morons,” Molly insists, bending at the waist a little to put some emphasis on it, really enunciate. “Caduceus stuck by you because he’s an optimist who couldn’t see you’ve got your head so far up your own asshole there’s no fuckin’ sunshine. Caleb, I’m here to tell you.” Molly cups his hands around his mouth. “Pull it the fuck out, mate! You’re going to end the world because you feel bad about Beau dying.”

“You act like you’re the first to tell me this.”

“I know I’m not the first, but since you won’t listen to literally anyone else, the gods brought me back from the bloody dead specifically, I think, to tell you to stop being a bastard stuffed bastard in bastard sauce and just stop.”

“I can see why the gods in their infinite wisdom decided to intervene and raise you from the dead.”

Molly spits. “I didn’t come back from the dead to persuade you of shit.”

“Apparently.”

“I’m not your conscience, Widogast.”

“You’re saying that like I ever thought that was the case.”

Molly folds his arms again, gripping his elbows in his hands and swallowing, glaring at the wall to distract himself from the slow crush of panic and futility coiling around him. It seems impossible he was in the Blooming Grove less than an hour ago. That he was laying in the grass, chatting with Caduceus. That he’d been surrounded, however briefly, by familiar faces and there was a plan, however, tenuous, as to how all this was going to end and now… he’s here. The shock of loneliness stings his throat and eyes all at once.

“You know, I’m not sure what I am, really.” Molly drags a palm across his face, pulling his hair from his brow again, wiping his eyes. “I thought my job was to get everyone together to, I don’t know, dogpile you until you stopped being a lunatic, but that doesn’t seem to be working.” He glances at Frumpkin who bares horrible fangs around belt and scabbard set in his mouth. “I don’t think I’m doing this right.”

“You got Fjord out,” Caleb says.

Molly blinks but Caleb doesn’t look at him, just keeps walking.

“It’s not your job to save us. You’re your own person. You don’t serve our purposes, Molly.”

“You can’t say that and hold me hostage, Widogast.”

“I know, but I’m a terrible person. Imagine someone better said it. It’s still true.”

Caleb’s hand is pressed against the wood of a heavy looking oak door. Molly can’t say when it was that the distance between the infinite hallway suddenly started to close, but it’s closed now and Caleb looks over his shoulder to meet Molly’s eyes. The wood beneath his hand is complex with runes and sigils, cut with some kind of arcane formula. It, like so many things in this place, ripples and changes before his eyes just looking at it. Caleb keeps staring at him, his burning stare inhuman and bright.

“Have they told you about Beauregard?” he says.

Dread drives a rod straight through Molly’s gut. His pulse rabbits fast.

“They told me a little. Like what she did, how she went down.”

“I don’t mean that. I mean have they told you about her. Do they talk about her?”

Molly hesitates. “If you mean, do they tell me funny stories about her, like what a shithead she was or the time she, I dunno, snorted oatmeal up her nose laughing at breakfast… no. They didn’t.”

“Ja. It’s hard for them.” He kind of looks away. “I remember her. I remember everything she ever said to me, actually.”

“Beauregard… she was pretty important to you.” Molly looks meaningfully around the giant mage-lair around him and the miniature dragon leering over his shoulder. “You’ve done a lot to save her. You’ve, well, you’ve pushed away everyone else who cares about you to do this. I can tell you’re dedicated but, speaking as a formerly dead person… you sure Beau would want to come back like this?”

“They didn’t tell you she became our leader, did they?” Caleb doesn’t wait for Molly to answer or acknowledge his previous question. “She told me once, that she had a reoccurring nightmare. In this dream, she’s standing on that cart on the Glory Run Road. She can’t move, her boots are frozen to the wagon wood while Lorenzo kills you.” Caleb’s looking at him with this strange expression, unreadable as a wall. “I don’t think she ever stopped having that nightmare.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Molly says.

“She called you ‘the best of us.’”

“Wow, okay.” Molly managed an exaggerated laugh. “That’s just because you didn’t know me very well and your bar was low back then. I should have told you all about this one time, in this port town, there was this thing with noodles –”

“It doesn’t matter,” Caleb cuts him off, visibly irritated. “It doesn’t matter that you’re an obnoxious, loud, carnival man that we barely knew. It doesn’t matter that we never really understood you, that you kept secrets, and died before we knew them. None of it matters because when you died, Beauregard regretted that it was you, instead of her.”

Molly stiffens a little, shoulders tensing. “Look, that’s a nice notion and all, but from what I’ve seen over and over, none of you much remember me like I was.” A beat. “Like I am.” Another beat. “Like I was before? Ah, fuck it…”

“Stop being flippant.”

“Sure. Stop holding me hostage.”

The wizard shakes his head, looking tired all at once. “You’re not going to listen to a word I’m saying, are you?”

“Caleb,” Molly says, “If you want me to listen, I would do that. You wanna sit down and have a cup of tea and talk? Great. I’d love that. Gossip is my thing. But I don’t think you’re trying to convince me of anything. I think you’ve already made some godawful decision and you’re just thinking out loud in my face.”

Caleb says nothing.

Just… stares at him.

It’s so strange. It’s Caleb, like it’s always been Caleb, just five degrees off Molly’s memory of the man – cleaner and more put together. He’s had a haircut and a proper shave. He looks like he should be on a council to something important somewhere, telling people to do things… but through every bit of that there’s still the fucking eyes. Just… empty and sad and resigned in exactly the same way he remembers but so much fucking deeper and blacker than that.

“I can’t talk to you,” Molly says softly, “if I’m a spell component and not a person to you.”

Caleb stares. “I don’t think you’re a spell component.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I want to know if you want to kill Beauregard.” He says it so blankly, so hallowed with exhaustion that it feels impossible that he’s been able to mask it until now. A deep festering despair in his voice that goes all the way down to the core of him as he laughs a little. “Because it seems now that everyone else in our little family has decided to kill her and it occurs to me that you, Mollymauk, might be the only one undecided on the issue.”

Molly doesn’t say a goddamn thing.

“Would you answer me?”

“It’s not as simple as –”

Caleb cuts him off saying, “Until I’m done asking questions, you should tell me the truth, Molly.”

And the suggestion takes hold of him. Gently. Not dominating but it slides over his tongue with such an easy familiarity Molly’s swallowed it before he can make even a token resistance and his shoulders kind of relax, tension easing out of his limbs for the first time since he was torn from the Blooming Grove. Caleb’s hand, holding something nonobtrusive at his hip, opens and he reaches up. It’s familiar. Molly lets him pat his cheek and thinks, unbidden, about Hupperdook and a very fucked up Caleb slurring, “Yeah. Th’only magical thing here… is you, friend.”

There’s something sticky on his palm. Smells like honey or…

“Just tell me what you think,” Caleb says.

“Okay.” Molly feels… strange, a little drunk almost but in a nice way, a mild anxiety in his breast that compels him say, “I don’t wanna kill, Beau. Bloody hell, of course I don’t.” It’s such a relief to say that, he goes on a little urgently. “Everyone is saying this is the right thing to do, but it makes my whole fucking body ache to think about. I don’t want to do it.”

“Do you think you can do it, if you had to? If it was down to you?”

“No.” The admission physically hurts to say aloud. Molly clenches his eyes shut. “I can’t.”

Caleb’s quiet for a moment.

Molly feels a hand on his head, pressed over his left ear, beneath the curl of his horn and he looks up at Caleb.

He looks strangely relieved. “Me too.”

“I’m not on your side, Caleb. It’s the wrong thing that I can’t do it. I can’t do it because I’m selfish and I don’t want to live with doing that to my friend… but I know it’s wrong.”

“I know.” Caleb laughs a little. “You feel poorly about that. I don’t. I’m not willing to kill Beau to save the world.” He shrugs. “I know its not fair or right, but she was… she really was the best of us. I can’t let her go like this.” He shakes his head, a wry smile suddenly on his lips. “This mistake. I don’t have to let it stand like the others.”

“Good people die all time,” Molly whispers. “The world’s not a fair place. It’s our job to make it fair as we can, but you can’t bloody do this.”

“My people don’t have to die,” Caleb says. “Not this good person.”

“Caleb, just stop—"

“You cared about Beau, yeah?”

“I died for her, didn’t I?”

Caleb studies his face and in his stare, Molly sees it – the bald-faced fact of it: He’s not looking at a man expecting to get away with anything. He’s not looking at someone with a tomorrow in mind. Then Caleb waves a hand and Molly feels the enchantment release its hold on his thoughts. It’s a cruel hand pulling a warm blanket off his shoulders and he’s standing in the sudden cold aftermath of the spell. All the compelled words sour suddenly on his tongue and a ripple of rage and grief lances through him simultaneously.

“I’m sorry. I needed to know where you really stood.”

And Caleb pushes the door open.

When he does, the air in the room rushes out. It’s freezing cold, turning Molly’s breath to fog instantly and penetrating him to the bone. He shivers, arms jumping up to tuck around his chest, his teeth chattering almost immediately in the artic chill. There’s light coming from the other room, cold and blue and anti-septic. It’s a large circular chamber, empty of everything, just stone walls etched in the same magical formula as the door except all the runes here glow gently blue, humming a slow two-two beat. Like a pulse.

Which makes sense because sitting the in the middle of the room, legs crossed, and facing them… is Beauregard.

She’s seated on a low stone dais. There is a barrier of blue light around the platform. The air glows around her, a vertical shaft of cold azure magic from floor to ceiling. She’s sitting as if in meditation, back straight, hands in her lap, eyes closed. She’s wiry and dark. Small and dense with muscle. Denser than he remembers. Her arms are probably bigger in the bicep than his now. Around her arms are silver bracers, smithed in the symbols of Ioun. There is blood on her fingers, on her knuckles, her lip split, her eye darkened with bruising and that… that makes her so familiar it turns something tense in Molly’s stomach.

Beau with a black eye.

Beau standing on the back of an ice-cracked wagon.

Beau screaming his name, her blue eyes wild in the dawn light, as Lorenzo –

“Why is she bloody?” Molly manages.

“She’s been like that since the day she struck down Oblivion,” says Caleb. He’s still got his hand on the door, his eyes on Beau. “Nothing touches her except divine magic. Caduceus and Jester used to heal the wounds, but they always return. Nothing we do stays. She always… goes back to the way she was in the moment she killed the Oblivion.”

Molly moves into the room. With every step toward Beau, the temperature drops, until Molly’s shivering so hard, Caleb must see it because he taps Molly on the shoulder and warmth slides through his clothes and insulates him in a thin layer of heat that makes his skin steam slightly in the freezing air. Molly moves close enough that he can see the light around her is not just light, but a thin, runic barrier – a magic layer of transparent blue writing so fine it looks like mist moving up and down the surface of the barrier wall.

“You can touch it,” Caleb says. “It only contains.”

Molly cautiously presses a palm against the magic and his hand cleaves lightly to it, like glass, like Beau’s a thing in a shop window he’s trying to see.

Molly can see now that the stone where she touches it is calcified and cracked, frozen as if by a spill of liquid nitrogen. Frost cakes the ground around the platform in shimmering white. The air near her is… humming. Shaking in Molly’s bones, buzzing down to the atoms that compose him. It feels awful and familiar all at once.

But he can see Beau clearly.

She is dressed in battle attire, or what remains of battle attire. The kind of thing you wear when you go to war for the gods.

Her long sleeveless jacket is shredded along the hem and shorn as if by a blade. The royal blue fabric is dark with blood which does not appear to have dried somehow. Her tunic is shredded open to the athletic small clothes beneath. There are etched and glowing bands around her arms, around her wrists, obsidian studs in her ear lobes that shimmer with enchantment. Her dark hair looks exactly as he recalls: shaved along the sides then knotted up at the top. Molly recognizes Yasha’s touch in the beads woven there in braids and plaits. There’s a tattoo of a posie beneath her right clavicle.

Molly’s throat knots up.

“Yasha and Beau…” Molly says, only after her gets his voice working. “Did Yasha—?”

“Marry Beau then lose her?” says Caleb. “Yes. On the same day in fact.”

Molly’s eyes burn. He clenches his hand shut against the barrier magic, leaning his weight against it. He can feel Caleb moving to stand at his right shoulder, watching him react but he doesn’t care. Frumpkin’s heavy footfalls place the dragon creature to his left, hovering protectively as Caleb touches Molly’s arm.

“Yasha won’t survive it.” His voice is certain and indifferent as sunset. “Losing her completely after Zuella—”

Molly knock his hand off his arm, yanking away. “Don’t!” Infernal heat laces his breath. “Don’t you try to use her—”

“You know I’m right.”

Molly pulls his hand from the barrier. “You want me to help you, don’t you? You’re trying to get me to help you.”

“No.” Caleb sounds sorry. “Just… confirming some things.”

He snaps his fingers and there’s a flare suddenly from the light barrier and the color of the runes, glowing faintly from every stone surface, changes suddenly to a deep, seething purple. Black steam immediately begins to burn off the sigils and Molly lunges back from Beau’s alter, hands up like he can defend himself from anything Caleb is doing. The wizard is ignoring him. He has some kind of crystal in his right hand suddenly and he’s drawing signs in the air with the fingers of his left hand. The signs stay there, like ghost writing, shivering with terrible potential energy. Like a bow string pulled taut except pulled through the whole fucking universe.

Frumpkin bumps into Molly’s back, his tail lashing in a sudden half-circle around him, penning him in suddenly, wings flaring up over head.

“I think the gods are on my side,” Caleb says, still casting his spell. The crystal in his hand disintegrates to dust and he waves a hand. Summons a blade from somewhere and uses it to slice open his left forearm, but doesn’t stop casting. “I was hasty before. I didn’t see it.” Blood splatters the floor. “All the spells to bring Beau back are so complicated without sentient sacrifice. Willing sentient sacrifice. I’ve had to build workarounds. So time consuming but now it’s so simple…”

“I’m not dying for your bloody spell!” Molly snarls.

“You already did.” Caleb looks over his shoulder. “You died for Beau ten years ago and not just a little; you died a true death. You were dead of a different kind. The kind that matters and makes gods intervene.” There’s a smile then, on Caleb’s lips, both sad and victorious. “That magic is forever, Mollymauk.”

Light flares blinding from Caleb’s fingers, igniting the blood on the flood so it burns white and evaporates into a red steam. Caleb closes his eyes. He breathes in and the crimson effluvium disappears down the wizard’s throat and when he opens his eyes, they’re burning red as a blood-letting sunset. He turns and presses both hands against the barrier wall that holds Beauregard in. Red light injects itself into the magic, spreading out like a cancer along the surface of it.

Molly feels a pull. Not on his body but a pull he’s come to know in the transition between life and death. Every time Vax’ildan sends him to and from the plane between realms– something is pulling on his soul.

“Caleb!” Molly feels that pull again, hideous and cold and Molly hits the floor on his knees, clutching uselessly at his chest. “Fuck! Stop! Stop!”

“It’s okay, you won’t lose your soul,” Caleb says. “I just need it here…”

There’s a flare from the barrier wall and Molly screams as the light seems to shove himself out of his flesh and the sliding back in feels like falling into a solid slab of screaming nerve and blood and it hurts. It hurts. Molly’s doubled over on the floor, arms knotted around his body, tail curled around himself. This spell has no guiding touch on it. No raven knight errant gentling the transition between astral and material and its like dying a little over and over. Nauseating and awful.

“I’m sorry. Most sacrifices are dead when this is happening.”

“Oh really?” Molly grits, getting one knee under him.

“Just a little longer,” Caleb murmurs. “It’s just a little farther—”

Molly doesn’t let him finish. He snaps his fingers.

Instantly, there’s a flash of light from Frumpkin’s mouth as the empty scabbards in his jaws ignite with conjuration magic. Frumpkin’s head jerks back, the dragonling snarling in surprise. But before anyone can lift a finger, Molly pivots around and lunges at him, faster than he can remember moving in his life… and his fist closes around something solid. He dive-rolls past the familiar, tearing the scimitar from its scabbard. Molly spins up, sword in hand, breathing frantic.

Caleb is glaring at him.

“Stop fucking around.” There is a dark and throaty edge to his Zemnian accent. His eyes flare in his skull, burning brighter, fixed on Molly. “You think you’re going to fight me, Mollymauk?”

“No.” He shakes his head, breathing fast and shallow. “No, I can’t fight you.”

“I know this has been… confusing.” There’s blue flame gathering in the man’s hand. “It’s an admirable instinct, but—”

Molly reverses the sword. An easy, almost casual flip of the blade in a two-handed grip, and sets it point-first against his own sternum. No hesitation. No time. The hit at first: like being punched, the breath driven from his body, then the pain (the feeling Lorenzo taught him ten years ago on the Glory Run Road). Mollymauk shoves it through his ribcage and—

He wakes up standing on a hill beneath the shining moon.

He’s clutching his breastbone, fists stacked where the hilt of a blade was driven in the Material plane. The moonlight is shining, shimmering on his skin like a sheen of diamond dust on his knuckles. Molly stumbles. His knees give out but before he can fall, he’s suddenly tackled as a blur of blue and skirts and arcane light bursts into existence and lunges at him. He collapses against them, arms seizing instinctively around their neck and their hair is silky, chiming with silver, and smells like carnival caramel when he breathes in.

“Jester!” Molly clutches her, fingers sinking into her hair, hooking his elbow around the back of her neck as she laughs and hugs him back. “Bloody hell.” He plants a big kiss in her hair, catching the curve of her ear. “Fools flock together huh?”

“Molly! Molly! Fuck! Shit!” She’s kind of crushing his ribs. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you? How’d you—?”

“Caleb didn’t kill me,” Molly whispers. He hugs her more tightly. “I did it myself.”

Jester freezes. Her fingers dig more tightly into his shoulder.

“S’alright, Jes.” He tries to laugh, but it’s not very convincing. “I’m a one trick tiefling.”

“Can you go back?” Jester whispers. “Molly, were you with Caleb? I can break through another way, but if you can go back–”

Molly pulls back, lets Jester cup his face in shaky fingers. “Caduceus put the Death Ward on me.”

Jester nods. Her eyes brim bright with tears, her pretty white teeth biting at her lower lip. Molly carefully mirrors her, fitting his hands around her dark, heart-shaped face. She starts to say something, but it comes out a sob, so Molly just drops his brow against hers and stays that way for a moment. Feels her tail lash protectively around his right knee, her fingers sink a little more deeply into his hair.

She murmurs, not words, but a low Infernal subvocalization that has no translation into the common languages of the realm – it just means… sadness, sadness, rage, regret.

“Tell me about it,” Molly says in kind.

Jester moves her hands down his neck, to his shoulders, his arms, taking his hands in hers.

“I’ll do it, Molly.” She squeezes tight. “I can stop him.”

“I know.”

A voice over his shoulder says, softly, “You will have half a moment.”

Molly smells dust, old soil, the faint scent of decay – not of flesh but some older less transient material. Jester tucks herself close to his side, gripping his arm tight and it hurts how much strength he can draw from that. Molly turns. Vax’ildan stands again on the hill with them, beautiful and familiar, but unlike every time before… Molly can feel the eeriness in the Raven Queen’s champion. The size of him suddenly astronomical behind his physical presentation.

There’s darkness rising from his shoulders, a strange canopy that stretches up from his back and spreads out in translucent gloom. Molly hears the rustle of wings, of feathers, of a thousand, ten thousand ravens taking wing. When he looks up, he realizes the darkness is merely the massive arch… no… just the shadow of two leviathan wings. Vax moves forward and the moonlight avoids him where walks. Molly doesn’t flinch, even when he fits both palms to either side of Molly’s face and lifts his eyes.

“ I can give strength you don’t remember, Mollymauk. But that’s all I can do. Are you ready?”

Molly pauses, then, “Kiss for luck?”

Vax’ildan – wreathed in darkness, gaze holding the mass of collapsed stars, the voice of the Raven Queen on his tongue – gives him a look. Then rolls his eyes and says, amused, “Fuck it. Kiss for luck.”

Then he leans down, tilting his head and kisses Molly gently on the mouth.

And Molly opens his eyes.

He’s standing in the same room, holding the scimitar point first against his chest, in the precursor of killing himself. There’s blood all over his forearms, his hands, and soaked through his tunic. But he’s still on his feet and Caleb is staring at him with this… startled expression. Eyes wide, mouth open as if in the middle of saying something. He’s still got one hand against the burning red magic that’s holding Beau, the other hand kind of raised in the attitude reaching or casting.

He looks frightened. That fades though as Molly releases his grip on the blade and it clatters to the floor. Molly exhales, his breath a silvery cloud and he backs up a little, shaking his head at if to clear it.

“Why did you do that?” Caleb says blankly. “Killing yourself won’t make a difference.”

“It did to me,” Molly pants.

“Please, don’t do that.”

Molly stares at him. “Caleb, I wish I could I say I’m sorry about this… but you’ve been an asshole.”

And that’s when Jester – stepping out of the ether like a woman stepping through a door – grabs the wizard from behind and punches him. It’s not, like, a ‘how dare you slap’. She snatches his collar in one hand, rears all the way back, and cracks him across the jaw with the other. Caleb staggers, shoulder slamming against the barrier wall. He scrabbles at the wall, visibly struggles to stay conscious through what is certainly a concussion and a broken jaw. Jester doesn’t give him the time. She raises one hand over her shoulder. A massive lollipop bursts into existence – pink and white and brilliant with ribbons. Then she takes the handle in both hands and she swings.

She hits him like a kid playing stick ball.

There’s an arcane flare – of magic hitting magic and Molly feels it as unmovable object meets unstoppable force. The lollipop hammers a defensive spell Molly has no understanding of and the impact ignites the air in blinding radiance. Molly is knocked to one knee by the shock wave alone. A body launches from the center of the room like a rachet ball and then slam into the far wall like a rag doll. It’s definitely Caleb. He hits the floor in a heap, a swirl of passive magic siphoning around his body.

Frumpkin, by then, has finished tearing across the room and lunges at Jester, jaws full of lightning –

“Bad kitty!” she screams.

Her eyes flare white and Frumpkin poofs out of existence.

Caleb seems to be regaining consciousness. He shudders and levers himself up on one elbow, head hanging low as he sways dizzily. He coughs blood, red splattering the flag stones. There’s blood in his hair at the back of his head. He can’t seem to orient himself or speak, suggesting that his skull might be cracked so badly its costing him basic functionality. He tries, with difficulty, to lift his head. His eyes are flickering erratically, brightening and dimming, like a circuit is shorting in him.

Jester, again, does not wait. She disappears then reappears standing directly over him.

She doesn’t say a damn thing.

She just raises a hand and with a flare a soft orb of pink magic blooms around her, encasing herself and Caleb. Immediately the passive magicks moving around Caleb go dormant and disappear. Over her shoulder, the massive lollipop rests like a mace in her hand. Invisible winds disturb her hair and skirts. Her eyes burn green in the iris and she just… waits. Because Caleb is bleeding out at her feet, fast losing consciousness in the neutral bubble of her anti-magic field.

Still he manages, “Jes…ter…?”

“Where is Caduceus?” she says. But when she speaks, her voice quavers. Water drips from her chin. “Did you kill him, Caleb?”

“Nev… I’d never…”

He can’t finish the sentence.

Jester covers her mouth with one hand, eyes squeezing shut, and Caleb slumps unconscious on the floor. For a moment, there’s just silence. Blood freezing on the cold stone floor. Then Jester dismisses the spiritual weapon and drops to her knees. She fits her hands to Caleb’s bleeding head. She combs the bloody hair from the ugly split in his skull and magic begins to sink gingerly into the wound. She’s whispering something softly, like a refrain.

Eventually, Molly moves to kneel with her inside the dome.

“He’ll be okay,” she says, attempting cheerfulness as tears overrun her eyes. “He’ll be okay. I’m asking the Traveler to break some of the… the forbiddance spells around the keep. The others will be here soon. We’ll be okay.” She chokes a little on her own voice. “Everyone’s back together.” Her fingers close in the back of Caleb’s robes, the magic dissipating from her fingers, and that’s when Molly loops his arms around her. She grabs his shirt, clinging suddenly, something building in her chest until she blurts, crying, “What did we do wrong, Molly?”

“Nothing.”

He cradles her head, rocking a little as she starts to sob.

“We tried so hard!”

“I know.”

Jester is wailing now, just gut-wrenching heaves against Molly’s shoulder. “I miss her so much!” She can’t seem to breathe, giving in entirely to ugly crying, almost hiccupping. “I miss Beau! She said we needed to take care of each other and we didn’t.”

“Hey, the world asked a lot from you. S’not your fault if you didn’t do every damn thing on the list.”

“I’m sorry!”

“Shh, stop it. It’s over,” Molly murmurs, hugging her closer. “It’s over, Jes.”

Jester just keeps crying until it seems like she may never stop, but even as he begins to think this, there is a sudden rush of warm wind and the scent of… of somewhere else. Somewhere green and summer-y, sap-sticky, and hot against the skin and Molly feels someone step into the space to his left and kneel. There’s no one there of course, but Molly sees it when Jester’s hair moves a little, an invisible hand tucking strands behind her ear and only then does her wailing become a sniffle.

“I know, but I didn’t want it to be this way,” she says loudly to no one.

Molly feels that murmur of wind again, so comforting it wipes away the cold of the room.

“You promise?” Jester says, looking up at the empty air.

And there’s a chuckle, resonate and deep. Molly gets the impression of the ‘yes’ and a whisper like a cloak against his shoulder, passing by.

And Jester turns to Molly and says, “It’ll be okay. I’m okay.”

Molly gives the room a wary once over. “You sure?”

Jester starts to smile. “We can fix it. It’s… it’s going to be—”

“Finally,” says a voice.

The word splits through Molly’s skull like a nail through the roof of his mouth. He’s on the floor before he can process anything farther, his every limb locked up around a sucker punch that didn’t happen. Dizzy, he struggles to lift his forehead from the ground, but the voice goes on like a tuning fork jammed inside his brain.

“Hey, man. Don’t run, I have some questions for you.”

Molly manages to lift his head. His vision is splitting, going dark around the edges. It hurts to look.

But, there in the middle of the room, Beauregard is standing. The barrier spell around her is gone. She’s stepped half way down from her dais, one foot sill up on the platform, the other on the floor in the attitude of descending a short flight of stairs. Her body is on fire. A pillar of blue and black flame sheathes her skin, billowing the torn edges of her jacket.

She’s looking at something forward and slightly to her left.

Her left arm is extended and her fist closed around something Molly can’t see. Her arm jerks slightly, like something is fighting her hold but she’s smiling this kind of confused, mildly annoyed smile. Like someone is being a little rude at a dinner party or something and she steps down fully. Ice bursts across the floor where her feet touch the stone, the temperature in the room going sub-zero and Molly knows without knowing that if the anti-magic field drops, they’re going to get the brunt of it.

“Wow. Stop spazzing out. I just want to talk,” Beau is saying in that awkward friendly-but-I’m-kind-of-faking-it voice she does when she’s working at being a person to someone she’d rather punch. “Hey. Listen, buddy. This isn’t like before. I’m something else and I need to ask you some stuff.”

And suddenly there’s someone standing in front of her. They’re struggling to get away from Beauregard, who has one iron-fingered grip viced relentlessly around their wrist.

They’re the size of a regular person, tall, slender, arguably a male build. Their skin is strange and iridescent and glowing faintly with a dim greenish warmth that penetrates the cold around them. They are dressed in adventurer’s finery – good boots, a clean blue tunic… and a long, long forest-green cloak that’s pulled up over their head and shadows everything but the lower half of their face.

Jester, seeing this, screams in horror.

But Beauregard doesn’t seem to hear. Her focus is entirely on The Traveler. She uses her free hand to grab a fistful of their cloak and drag them closer.

“I’m trying to be nice here,” she says, exasperated when her captive shoves a hand against her chest. “I’m a new god too, you know. We should stick together.” The Traveler doesn’t say anything, just bares their teeth and light flares through their body, snapping through Beauregard like a blow that knocks her face to the left. “Fucking. Rude,” she says, glaring down at the other god in front of her. “Stop it.”

“I don’t have answers for you,” says the Traveler. His voice cuts through the disharmonics from the other god, dragging a swath of relief through the room allowing the mortals there to breathe again. “I didn’t kill a god to become one.” A smile pulls briefly at his mouth, wry, and fiercely proud. “I found a faith stronger than any in the world and she believed in me. I don’t know what you are, half god. You are not like me.”

Beau-Who-Is-Not-Beau thinks about that.

Her eyes, Molly notices now, are pitch black hollows full of nothing.

“You’re right. Duh. I need to talk to her.” She thinks about it some more, then looks suddenly toward the two tieflings huddled together against the wall. “Hey, Molly. You know Vax’ildan, right?”

“Oh no,” Jester whispers.

“I wanna talk to his boss,” Beau says. “Can you tell him that?”

Then she smiles at Molly… and of course it kills him instantly.

#critical role #mollymauk tealeaf #caleb widogast #the mighty nein #critrole #long post #this one goes up to eleven

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quixsilver · 7 years ago

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So I read online that there’s a part of the cell that’s actually called ectoplasm and it just sort of got me thinking on how that figures into ghost stuff until I ended up crafted a Frankenstein’s monsters of headcannons that I decided to post on the internet at 2am for no reason. Heavily inspired by jay Eaton’s ghost physics by Enjoy?

An essay no one asked for

Okay so in biology, ectoplasm is the clear outer part of cytoplasm in a cell. So if a ghost is comprised of ectoplasm that would make them giant cells or basically amoebas. They are however supposed to be dead things so from there I started building this web of bullshit.

In this head cannon, ghosts are an inter-dimensional species of entities that are almost indistinguishable from the single celled organisms called amoeba. Ghosts however do have several distinctions that highlight their dimensionally foreign properties such as the fact they do not posses any sort of substance comparable to endoplasm.

Ghosts are comprised of a sort of cytoplasm that has the non-granulated and clear properties of ectoplasm in regular amoeboid cells, thus bringing on the general term for the material “ectoplasm”. Ectoplasm has several anomalous properties because of the fact that it originates in an alternate dimension; it has the capacity to quantum tunnel (phenomenon where a particle passes through a potential barrier that it classically cannot surmount.) and contains microfilaments composed of an unknown material that can act as programmable matter, which is matter that has the ability to change its physical properties (shape, density,conductivity, optical properties, etc.) in a programmable fashion based upon user input. This programable matter has also been observed to be able to generate gravitons and thus manipulate the forces of gravity.

Ghosts in their unstable premature state have the appearance of an giant amoeba, being a gelatinous blob like entity with transparent qualities. Ectoplasm from the ghost zone is electroluminescent, this means a ghosts ectoplasm is constantly lit up as a result of their ecto-signature. They seem to function off of unstable pseudo-nucleus that will eventually give out and self destruct, causing the structure of the ghosts exterior to destabilize and thus the mass to fall apart. Because of this, ghosts require a source of memory to keep in a stable imitation or copy. Most ghosts however will never find a suitable donor of memory as there are no none sources of actual DNA in the ghost zone.

When introduced into the environment of this dimension, ghosts will seek out decaying organic material to “consume”. This is not done to gain energy for locomotion or any other process, but to gain the genetic memory of cells by more or less created a copy of the the DNA comprised of the ectoplasm’s programmable matter;ectomatter. This Ectoplasmic DNA is kept in an imitation of a nucleus known as the ghost’s “core”. The core carries an electric system that stimulates memories to keep them active. This self contained electric matrix is known as the ghost’s “ecto-signature”. Ghosts are able to create imprints of somatic memories in recently dead organisms, essentially allowing a certain portion of an organisms personal experiences, wants or ambitions to pass on to the ghost. After genetic memory has been gained and a stable form established ghosts will not seek out anymore decaying organic matter. Because the “DNA” is merely an imitation of actual DNA, ghosts do not have the capacity to remember things such as bone or muscle structures or interior organs, but these are not needed anyway. Instead, ghosts will adopt exterior features such as skin, nails, cartilage, and even hair.

They also adopt useless features such as a mouth that leads directly into the ectoplasmic mass and eyes that are not required to perceive light. Somatic memory of the ghost (the ghosts experiences, not the imprints) are stored in an imitation brain, that’s just as meaningless as it’s eyes or mouth. Things such as chemical processes or cellular reproduction do not occur instead a ghosts brain is only capable of simulating a single chemical emotion learned from imprint memory with the emotions typically being fear or anger as adrenaline is the most common chemical ghosts can simulate.

Ghosts are capable of absorbing new ectoplasm to increase mass. As a result, ghost have the ability to create a copy of themselves with excess ectoplasm. however this copy is incapable of prolonged existence because the memories they have are imitations of imitations. This is the beginning of a new ghosts “life cycle”. The copy will either imprint and become semi sentient or destabilize. Because the only components of a ghosts makeup are ectoplasm and programmable matter a ghost will never truly age or reach a point at which it is unable to function.

Ghosts “feed” through radio-synthesis or the capture and metabolism by organisms, of energy from ionizing radiation, analogously to photosynthesis. Ghosts can also feed off of actual chemicals such as adrenaline or serotonin.

Because of a ghosts limited range of intelligent function they would classified as semi sentient as they are not capable of pain or truly experiencing emotions. Their mindset is entirely focused on a sole emotion or even subject or activity that they learned off through random happenstance or the somatic memories of their imprint.

abilities of ghosts include:

Duplication: the ability to asexually create copies of themselves, typically with only a simplified copy of a ghosts core, mainly to achieve a purpose beneficial to the source. After which the copy will destabilize or go on to become an entirely new ghost.

phasing: a ghosts use of ectoplasm’s ability to quantum tunnel.

heightened senses are a result of the fact that a ghosts entire body acts as sensory organs, Being sensitive to vibrations, light, and chemical contact.

invisibility: is an ability that stems from a ghosts ability to absorb and interact with radiation around it, with light being a form of electromagnetic radiation that a ghost can manipulate. This light manipulation can also be used to appear human. the ability to manipulate electromagnetic radiation is also associated with a ghosts ability give its form different colors as ghosts exteriors are entirely comprised of the same material.

Ghost rays: plasma discharges are when a ghost absorb and pump a massive amount of thermal radiation into a small portion of their ectoplasmic mass until it disassociates into ions and separate the ectoplasm from themselves to direct at a target. The discharges behave in a manner similar to extremely hot ionized gases.

possession or “overshadowing” is the process in which a ghost will override an organisms brain function by overriding the nervous system with electricity from the ghosts ecto-signature. The ectoplasm mass of the ghost is condensed and phased into the organisms integumentary, muscular, and nervous systems. Prolonged possessions are generally not healthy for the host organism as the ghost forces itself onto the neurons of said organism. Faulty or incompetent possessions can cause permanent brain damage or even catatonia.

flight is the use of ectomatters ability to generate and manipulate gravitons

ghosts bodies are classified as amoebas and such limbs such as arms, legs and even heads are purely aesthetic because the cores memories require input to be comprehendible to the imprint sources senses, meaning ghosts are capable of body distortion also known in common amoebas as pseudopods, with the only limitation being that the mass needs to stay in one piece. It should be noted that body distortion is entirely different than duplicating as duplicating is when a ghost becomes two separate masses with their own cores.

Ghosts are only classified as amoeba because their general structure is incredibly similar. They are not however actual living organisms as they do not biologically age, traditionally reproduce or have actual physical DNA. They are merely imitations of actual organisms, spawned from other ghosts. they once existed as an actual species of reproducing amoeba that had a similar ability to create duplicates without physical stable nuclei, so the first ghosts imitated the DNA of the actual amoeba. Existing in the cycle of creation and imitation for millions of years with only occasional ghosts slipping through “portals” to imprint on organisms in this dimension. But the species of amoeba went extinct and thus the only source of new ghost now is the duplication of stable ghosts and imprinting in this dimension.

The ghost zone itself is actually a pocket dimension that exists between the fourth dimension (time) and the fifth dimension. Because the ghost zone exists outside the timeline, time works has varying affects in different parts of the ghost zone. It doesn’t follow the conventional laws of time in our dimension (third dimension). The ghost zone is entirely comprised of ectoplasmic particles the exist extremely far apart, similar to the state of outer space in this dimension. The ghost zone absorbs radiations across several dimension as the free floating ectoplasm carries an almost insignificant charge. The exact form of radiation is unknown but seems to be a previously undiscovered form of cross dimensional radiation. Because of ectoplasm’s ability to adopt new properties as a result of intelligent programming the ghost zone is full of structures and environments created, wether consciously or unconsciously by the ghosts themselves. As for actual environment, there’s an actual planet like structure orbiting the ghost zones version of a sun (a mass of ionized plasma similar to ecto-rays). The planet itself was struck by a large object, causing the planet to shatter into a cone like configuration. Momentum doesn’t seem to have affected the debris which still orbits in a synchronized fashion with the largest mass.

the destruction of the planet is what caused the extinction of the ghosts source species. And because of the extinction level event ghosts had to rely on solely imprinting on dead organic material.

I may do another essay about how Danny, portals and ghost weopons work.

#danny phantom #danny phantom au #ghost #biology #phandom #holy shit now its 3am #ghost biology

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lloaegalacticnews-blog · 8 years ago

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A001.2758.4.3

Program records

...

Subject threat level red.

Monitoring of last connection released.

...

Displaying feed from 04.3.0941:53

She sits staring at the body; hands covered to her elbows in blood. Shame. Another failure. But that's why you start on the most stubborn. Information becomes easier to attain the more the actual targets come to understand your methods. Anticipation. So often it's something to be savored. But for these people... Well. There are more kinds of anticipation than one. And she does so love working in front of a crowd. The brother next. Then the child. A few screams and one with information would come forward. Strange energy starts forming around her vision. Black and white interlaced together building with a roar that drowns out all other sound. No! She wasn't done yet. She has to finish the job- Lord Apsu is no longer forgiving of failure. It burns around her- paralyzing. This can't be happening, after all the power she worked so hard for, all her plans! Soon her world is completely enveloped with broken images and a repeating static. Her vision is black. Is she dead? She believes her eyes are open. There IS nothing; no body, no depth or width. The world consists of a single line. . . Error. Error. Error. A voice. “Can you hear me? You may know me as 'The Lady of Fate.' I've been trying to find a way to break this program for ages. I need you to stay calm. This is not going to be your best day. Hold on.” The Lady of Fate? That stuck up pseudo goddess? Oh that absolute b- The line changes. Command accepted. … … … Loading Ejection script. … … … Waste collection deployed. “Shit. Uh. S-stay calm, and pray. Not to me, damn it! OK, OK. OK. OK... I can do this.. OK- You're going to need to not be uh, not be detected as waste... uh... if you could flop around a bit that'd be great. I'll see if Bes can pick you up.” The voice fades and there's a gurgling around her that she can feel more than hear. The blackness recedes suddenly as two giant rays of light intersect on the location with blinding radiance. There is a hollow metallic echoing and without warning... one of the beds flips to it's full upright position. There's an brief yelp as catheters and IV's hooked to up to their bodies go taut and snap. There's an insect like tapping growing closer and louder. A total of four impacts to the ground nearby, they groan and shift, and cough. The spot lights shift to focus on the new position, one of them looks up barely able to see against the glare. In the distance more bodies come down. Red flashing in the darkness beyond the light, a loud klaxon raised. They're all female. One tries to speak but the words come out as more of a series of vowels. They look toward the noise, and their questions are lost in the raising clamor of the metallic- TIKTIKTAK TIKTIKTAK scraaaape. Coming closer. There are running steps from the other direction, with a steady chant of, "Not good, not good, not good!" broken only occasionally by a wheeze, and grating cough. A short, VERY ugly man, missing an eye he doesn't bother to cover with a patch, breaks into the light dragging a flat hover cart. He makes shushing noises as he approaches the ladies. “I'm Bes, I'm here to grab ya, and possibly save ya too.” He wheezes a laugh. They didn't get it. It's hard to be a letcher in an age of enlightenment. He clears his throat again and starts putting the women on the bed of the cart. Bes notices a series of glowing red eyes breaking the blackness beyond the circle of light. No, not good at all. He hates dying. They never clone his face right. The little man rushes, and puts the last woman on the hovering sleigh with very little delicacy and yelps as a large concave blade twice as tall as he is slams into the ground between him and the hover cart. It draws across the ground raising a shower of sparks catching him and drawing him toward it's unseen maw. He sub-vocalizes to Fate “Waste disposal seems to agree with you. Can't be a piece of trash these days in peace.” Fate replies. “Are you going to be alright? I'm bringing the ship around.” Bes lets out his wheezing laugh- “No, but I've got a blank on the ship, and I left my UDD on the cart with the girls.” Fate starts “I can't-" an abrupt pause, then a sigh. "I can believe you're that stupid. Never mind.” She sounds done. When this is over she'll probably ask for a transfer again. Bes knows the sleigh will keep them moving toward the outer wall. And that Fate will be able to track his UDD. He focuses on not getting forced into the incinerator array of the waste disposal unit. It's not used to things that dodge, so it's no real trouble for him to- The scrapping blade takes off part of his calf and most of his foot, and spins him rapidly onto his back. He orders his LifeNet program to constrict the vessels and stop letting his nerves transmit pain. He is rolled as it comes down again. He idn't have any weapons that would make a dent in the thing, so he did the only logical thing when confronted with a waste disposal unit. He made a mess. Bes wasn't strong, or fast. He didn't have charm, or good teeth. But he loved pranks. Sometimes pranks could be useful. He'd been intending on painting the cyrotubes and filling the empty one with expanding foam. It would look like the girls had exploded while in stasis, and Fate being so predictable, would open the first in line. The red expanding foam would come in contact with the air, it would super accelerate and he could come in all surprise that he had caught her “red handed.” But. He really didn't enjoy dying. He took the tight little package from his belt. The blade fell again and he activated the foam deployment system. He stood up rolled the package toward the Unit. At first it was rather unimpressive; it let out a quick pop of smoke and red goo. He was suddenly glad he hadn't shouted “Aha!” or something, as if he'd won already. Maybe it needed more propellant to distribute faster? He tried to stand and fell after a single step. Right. No toes. The blade came down. No more pain? He never knew when last memories stopped and life in the blank began... the sudden screeching scrape of the blade across the metal flooring made him open his eyes. It actually went for the foam? But it was a tiny mess it had never spread out. “Come on!” he cried. “I rate higher than a smear! Why I-” He never got to finish the thought. The package hit the furnace gorge, and the rapid oxidization he planned went a little overboard. The explosion set warning displays from his LifeNet in his vision. A few dozen lacerations, about a pound of shrapnel, and burns. Lots of burns. This didn't make sense! He'd made it from all inflammable ingredients! He rolled over, and sub-vocalized a very unenthusiastic whine “Caaaaarry me?” Fate didn't reply. Or maybe he was deaf. Probably deaf. He snapped his fingers a few times. Definitely deaf. Well... looked like he was going to disappoint everyone again. He was coming back alive. --- It took nearly ten minutes to get back to the ship with his half foot. He ended up using a piece of the waste disposal unit as a crutch. He kept vocalizing that he was coming, since he couldn't hear a reply. He was nearly to the ramlock entry before his hearing started coming back. He climbed up into the ship with an unsteady wheeze. Fate had the ship disembark once the airlock was sealed, and started retracting the ram. A screeching of metal on metal, and the ground lurched followed by a hollow pomf. Bes came further into the room obviously sweating looking rather pleased with himself. He sat to take the weight off his sore... everything. Fate was making an entrance. She came in dramatically- she'd done some make up he was sure. She had short blonde hair, almost white, cut to end at her jawline and to follow the line of it. She wore her captains uniform; a durable jumpsuit of blue and grey. "We're calculating for the final acceleration. You did well Bes, but we lost three of the other teams. We only managed to claim a dozen with these four." She turned her eyes toward the sleigh. "I know you have questions. I'm Vala. You may call me Fate. And you're on a ship." She touched the UDD on her wrist and the sleigh set down. Turned off power; another moment and the pressure was gone. She'd turned off gravity. "We need to do some physical therapy, but for now this will let you move and talk without pain. I know you're curious, Let me cover one thing before you ask. Your powers are gone. If you remember having any... magic. It doesn't exist here." Bes chimes up, "Yep! All the magic has been sucked out of the universe except in the bedroom." Fate shakes her head. "Not the time." Bes laughs that wheezing cough, but with delight in his eye he keeps on. "We just survived a suicide run, AND got our cargo here out safe. I almost died without making a pun! I couldn't live with myself if that happened!" Fate sighs. Bes stage whispers at the sleigh, "Someone should show her their 'somatic component'... make a little magic?" He waggles his eyebrows "Eh?" Fate ignores him. Pushing a few more buttons the group feels as though they're starting to fall, but it's toward the door. "I need to get started. You can ask your questions as we go." A flurry of questions from everyone tumble over each other. Fate gives a sad smile. "There's a lot that is different, The best way to put this... You've been trapped in an illusion. A realm with beings that treated you like pets, and claimed to be the source of all power. There, they were. Here there are no beings like that, no mystic powers like that. Everything can be explained and math and chemistry are the only magic formula." She takes a deep breath and resolve crystallizes in her eyes. "The big questions first." She looks at each woman in turn with their question. "Where you are is complicated, I'll come back to it. "As you look a little panicked; the rest of your body never existed. I'm guessing you were a race other than human in the program. We're all human here. "The program you came out of was a prison for your mind. Likely to use your bodies in experiment, to provide genetic material for them to continue growing, or keep you from leaving. We were hoping the last. That you might have some knowledge that would help us. That's why we pulled you out. "As for who's in charge here- a race of mechanical humans called the Advancers. The automated waste cleaner that you saw was one of theirs. "As I mentioned earlier, there is no magic. The cart repels on carefully controlled magnetic fields, and I did not speak into your minds. I spoke into a intercom; it copies my voice and carries it wherever we have designated it to a speaker." She pauses and lifts her the device on her wrist close to her mouth and speaks to it. "See?" She points to a spot on the ceiling with a hundred small holes in a circle. It does seem like her voice is coming from there but much more loudly than she spoke. "The Ship is metal because it needs to be tough. We are floating, just not on water. We're in the sky now, flying, beyond the blue. So high, the world you were on can't pull us toward it's personal 'down'. "My role here is is captain. This is the ship given to me, and Bes is kind of...” Bes looked up with a mischievous smile. She changed what she was going to say. “He's Bes. He's unconventional but will generally get any job you give him done. "Now: Where you are, and who is in charge of it? "You were on an unnamed world in the Ralif star system. That doesn't mean much to you... Imagine you looked up at the sky, and pointed to a star. Then followed the motion until it got bigger from a point of light, until it was a sun like ours. And you kept going until you found another earth, a planet, different from the one you left, but the same overall shape. And from there, the sun- the star you came from is just a pin prick of twinkling light. Hardly even visible on a night with no moon. The star you're flying past now is called Ralif. You were on the ninth of the planets that circle it. Like the moon goes across your own sky. That is WHERE you are. "As for who didn't make it- I don't know if they were friends of yours or completely unrelated. We don't know their names, hell- I don't even know your names. You made it out of a prison. Don't focus on what you can't change. It's done. And you can blame me. Hate me if you need to- but I do not regret it. “Who is in charge, are the race called the Advancers. They were human. However, they gave up their bodies for machines, and they cannibalize worlds for their resources. Grow children and trap their minds with programmed rules. So they live in our world, but they are little more than automatons listening to the older ones. This is why we came to get you, we are enemies of the Advancers. We believe they're spreading like a virus and it's only a matter of time before they consume the rest of humanity in their ways.” There is a heavy moment of silence. The woman with ancient green eyes and pale brown hair speaks first. "A flying ship. Well, that's new..." Closing her eyes, she seems to be making an effort to calm down. A few moments later she opens them again with a light of suspicion. "It seems...” she says slowly, “I will not know if what you say is true... yet. How do you want us to help? Where will you be taking us now?" Fate held up a hand. “Names first.” The green eyed woman speaks. “My name, is Ash.” A curvy blonde with sky blue eyes and almost luminescent pale skin picks up the questions immediately after. ““Nica...” Says the blonde slowly, in almost a whisper. She looks up and gains confidence in her voice. “Veronica Campbell, at your service.” She finishes with a slight nod. “And you want us to help you? What secrets could we hold if our minds were trapped in that machine? And as you say- everything we thought we knew is a lie, a fabrication.” Her voice grows softer, and she crosses her arms almost hugging herself, “How can we even begin to help? We know even less about ourselves than you do." Fate nods. “You come from a world of magic, where anything can be an illusion or not what it seems. It will take you time to understand. I don't expect you to take me at face value.” She turns from Ash to Nica “We got you out because we thought you might be original humans who went Advancer, perhaps scientists- or were trapped and being used.” She shrugs. But you notice her lips are pressed into a tight line before she speaks again. “We had no way of knowing what you would know until we got you out.” “Yes fine, I'm Seveiren.” Says the woman with hazel blue eyes and ink black hair. Impatient with a harsh expression that contrasts with her soft face. Fate continues from the original question then. “As for where we'll be taking you? That's up to you. Once we determine you're not holding something back, we can take you to another world. You can live free. Or... you can help us against the Advancers. Maybe get some of your friends still in the program out. Save more people from getting trapped like you were. Find out why they just had you sitting there living a fantasy!” The one with dark winter blue eyes and black hair speaks up for the first time “My name is Davriel.” She looks around and glares at Fate her eyes panicked. “So we're trapped here? We can't go back? We fight an unknown based on what you tell us, or lose any chance of seeing friends again? What kind of manipulative choice is that?” Fate lets out a deep breath. “It's only kind of choice I have to offer. Either you recognize that you were trapped, and we saved you- or we can't trust you at our back. And it's better to put you somewhere that isn't going to get us killed. Facts are, you are going to be a waste of resources in one way or another.” The dark eyed woman makes a muffled hopeless noise into her hands, and stays quiet. Finally, Seveiren looks up after listening to every one else. “Is there a way to learn your kind of magic?” Fate gives a sardonic half smile. “You could say that, if you have will to learn, there isn't anything you can't do here.” "Well, get on to rehabilitation. Then teach me. I don't want to be a useless extra expense." She replies. Ash speaks up has a stricken cast to her face. “I need to know more before I'll believe that was an illusion!” She puts her head in her hands “I had a family! A husband and child! That was real. It couldn't have been an illusion: I gave birth. I held her in my arms. Those feelings can not be fake!” Fate moves closer and puts a hand on Ash's shoulder “Ash? The people were real, the feelings were real. The world was fake. Your family likely is still in the simulation. You can still see them again if we win.” "Then as Seveiren says. Teach us. How can I help?" Fate nods. "We have a long trip ahead of us. I'm not going to lie to you; You're not strong enough right now to walk under your own power, let alone aid us. So you'll be going to one of our bases, with the other eight we rescued. You don't have to worry about long arduous training though." She gestures to the beds that look like they have glass closing tops. And doesn't seem to notice Bes rolling his eyes and mouthing along as she talks. "You'll be going to sleep, these are cryogenic stasis beds. When you wake up, you'll have your strength back. It will take time for you to relearn all you could do before. However, They will have registered UDS for each of you, paid in advance. That will assist in learning some skills. Once we question you, you can decide if you want to help us or find your own way in the universe." She makes a gesture toward the sleeping pods. As they climb into their pods, Bes lets out a breath and has them named now. Not by their introductions. He knew the sort: Bimbo, Baggage, Trouble and Tears. Thank the gods for stasis. Davriel and Ash went to their beds right away, but Nica and Seveiren lingered. Seveiren watching Nica, and waiting impatiently. Nica with a faraway look in her eyes, gently moving her hands on the bed and mouth moving as if there's a word just out of reach. "Stasis?" She muses softly. “Sleep, heal, and learn..." She looks back over to Fate. "Are we learning your magic while we rest, or were you going to question us first?" Her voice strangely calm for someone being told they're about to be frozen. “You'll learn some while you rest. It does no good for you either way to be unable to open doors or find a bathroom.” Nica nods and goes in for the long sleep. "You dressed your words well, but you mean interrogation. After this part is done." Her face is uncompromising. Seveiren crosses her arms, and stares into Fate. "Not in the sense you mean it. This is not your world. We have easier methods of extracting information. More reliable methods." "Divination is still a strong suit of yours?" Fate smirks. "Rest assured, you're not going to be tortured when you arrive, and it won't take an arm and a leg to be free." Seveiren pauses. Closes her eyes. Smiles. "You lied." Fate looks up sharply. "About what, exactly?" Her eyes gleaming with suspicion that someone from an illusory world would have background enough to claim she was a liar. "There is magic here. Under other names." She frowns. "Not what- he speaks of. That is a man, isn't it?" Her eyes question the remainder of Bes. Bes stirs. "Now that's not very nice..." Fate raises a hand. "There are things that are inexplicable. However, that is only because we don't know enough to figure them out. You will find no miraculous powers that set you above everyone else. There's none of that kind of magic here. I wasn't lying." "Forgive me if I don't take you at face value." Seveiren inwardly smiles, as though a long held private joke was mentioned. Then looks to steel herself as she stares at the chamber. "How long is our... journey?" "Three weeks ship time." "Time to learn what that means." "It means- for you, while you're traveling, three weeks will pass. To those not going our speed, between seven to ten times as much time will pass, depending on our course and unexpected gravity wells. it'll make more sense once you've slept and understand what relativity is." "One hundred and forty seven to two hundred and ten days doesn't seem very precise." She sighs. "And it's a lot to lose. Math and science first. Wake me up when we get there." After her tube closes, Bes clears his throat. "You can close yer mouth now." Fate stiffens and stalks out of the room.

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