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deercountry2022-05-16 04:23 pm
unsheathedfromreality) wrote in deercountry2022-05-16 04:23 pm
Real & Half-Real: Chapter 2 - Nephele-That-Isn't
Who: A brave party of rescuers and their intrepid support staff
What: Pocket dimension shenanigans to save a missing Sleeper
When: Two insane days in May
Where: Nephele-that-isn’t, which isn’t Deer Country either
All at once–one day, in early May–the portal’s finished, and the planning is as near to done as it will ever be. All at once, it’s time to venture into Nephele-that-isn’t, and retrieve not one but two Sleepers who’ve gone astray.
The team assembles in the clearing by Argonaut’s abandoned shrine, in a darkness lit by glowing CRTs and the green, green moon. The portal itself, and the world beyond it, casts a light all its own–and one by one they step over that rune-etched silver threshold, and one by one vanish into another story than Trench’s own.
Like being sieved through strands of glass and fire. Like being picked apart thread by narrative thread as the Words themselves that write the universe flash before stunned eyes in the seconds before they’re erased and something worse substituted. Moments of fleeting alignment between passager and host-creator come in stopped heartbeats and empty lungs, in the memory you’ve been dead for years and the cold slide of steel between ribs.
Then that second-that's-years is over and deposits its captives beneath an alien sky, with sun and ring and stars and moons foreign as any far-flung land. Some travelers wear skins and magic to suit those stranger heavens; some have been changed by the logic of the half-world half-story to better fit its weave.
With a changed nature come changed senses and abilities–and those in the skins of shrikes, with eyes to see, may notice much more if they look.
All can see one grim fact, however, on entering the world: Any clock, any watch, any Omni now displays 48:00:00 or its analogue equivalent... And begins at once to tick down.
[[ Part of the Real & Half-Real player plot! Navigate to other plot posts: [OOC] Interest Check | [IC] Prologue | [IC] Iskierka's Notes | [IC] The Portal & the Plan ]]
What: Pocket dimension shenanigans to save a missing Sleeper
When: Two insane days in May
Where: Nephele-that-isn’t, which isn’t Deer Country either
All at once–one day, in early May–the portal’s finished, and the planning is as near to done as it will ever be. All at once, it’s time to venture into Nephele-that-isn’t, and retrieve not one but two Sleepers who’ve gone astray.
The team assembles in the clearing by Argonaut’s abandoned shrine, in a darkness lit by glowing CRTs and the green, green moon. The portal itself, and the world beyond it, casts a light all its own–and one by one they step over that rune-etched silver threshold, and one by one vanish into another story than Trench’s own.
Like being sieved through strands of glass and fire. Like being picked apart thread by narrative thread as the Words themselves that write the universe flash before stunned eyes in the seconds before they’re erased and something worse substituted. Moments of fleeting alignment between passager and host-creator come in stopped heartbeats and empty lungs, in the memory you’ve been dead for years and the cold slide of steel between ribs.
Then that second-that's-years is over and deposits its captives beneath an alien sky, with sun and ring and stars and moons foreign as any far-flung land. Some travelers wear skins and magic to suit those stranger heavens; some have been changed by the logic of the half-world half-story to better fit its weave.
With a changed nature come changed senses and abilities–and those in the skins of shrikes, with eyes to see, may notice much more if they look.
All can see one grim fact, however, on entering the world: Any clock, any watch, any Omni now displays 48:00:00 or its analogue equivalent... And begins at once to tick down.
[[ Part of the Real & Half-Real player plot! Navigate to other plot posts: [OOC] Interest Check | [IC] Prologue | [IC] Iskierka's Notes | [IC] The Portal & the Plan ]]
3.1 The Princes of Biding and Sacrifices (cw: corpses, mass death, gore)
The stench is horrific even at the mouth of the cave. Its entrance has been carved in a danse macabre, with dead of all four species holding hands as their frozen sport leads entrants deeper into the cave; the carvings are defiled with blood and filth. The first corpses--elves and shrikes, long-decayed, plumage plucked and scattered--are no more than ten yards inside. The corpses appear inanimate, but they have enough motion left in their hands and arms to grab and pin anything that comes into their reach. Yet they are not so thick on the ground they can't be avoided or kicked away on the journey to the central chamber, another hundred yards down the hall.
A needed breath of air comes as one arrives in that chamber, a vast dome that stretches fifty or sixty feet toward a natural skylight. Trees and flowers grow right beneath that open stretch of sky... or did grow, until two Princes came to rest here. Now the plants are all dead and torn down, except thick thorn-hedges that constrain approach to the vast obscenity at the center of the once-grove: A pile of a hundred (a thousand? More?) corpses stacked atop each other in a gruesome platform.
The two Princes stand waist-deep in the clutching corpse-arms of their followers, twenty feet off the ground; the pile nearly obscures how the contents of their opened bellies are grown together like grafted branches. Biding is pale and shining still even in the gore, his silver hair perfect and talons so fine light can be seen through them. Sacrifices is Biding’s his golden echo, though crimson blood drips constantly from the plumes of his arms and chest.
They murmur mouth-to-mouth, or stare deeply in each other's eyes, uninterested in anyone who enters the chamber until they come in range of the pile. Then they erupt into violence, Sacrifices' unerring bow backing Biding's impossible swordwork and uncanny ability to appear everywhere at once.
Frontal assault is possible, but unwise. Perhaps something can be found in Biding's ancient home, standing only a mile away in a thick patch of transplanted forest.
3.1.1 The House Beyond the Last Cedared Hill (cw: unreality and horror themes)
Old houses--human habitations a hundred, two hundred, five hundred years old--develop their own character. Old houses may, with time, become people.
Ancient houses become monsters.
A house as old as the Prince of Biding's house--a house older than human and orcish civilization--has become a very great monster indeed.
There are no guards about it. There are no fences; its reputation is sufficient protection. The remains of an old-growth forest, alien to the foliage around it, provides a screening wall pierced by a tunnel of woven trees. (The trunks wind around each other in incestuous pairs; the branches, latticed together, have long since grafted each tree to its marriage-partner.)
At the end of the living corridor, the house crouches like a waiting predator. Its doors are also living wood, cunningly interworked and ancient; they are twice as high as a man and half as thick as one. Yet for all their weight, a touch makes the doors swing wide without a sound; without a sound, the house swallows its latest visitors into a long stony throat. The hall is made of a faintly luminescent white-and-ultraviolet marble--elfstone--common to deep elven ruins. Rooms branch from it at strange angles, like the feathery subdividing of a lung. Indented talonmarks line the floors and the walls, emphasized with enamel and gilding--speaking to the strange and precise mind of the house's master, who'd walk the same path every day for the millennia required to wear grooves into solid stone.
A gentle wind blows through the halls, reversing direction now and then as if the house breathes. It brings with it the scent of growing things, and blows stray leaves of written-over parchment before it. Rooms deeper in the house are open to the forest, or gardens, or strange deep pools with stranger creatures in their depths. Wide eyes and
eyesblink from birch trunks and shallow waters, enticing and deadly: For once one goes deep enough in the house, the traps begin. Poisoned needles, deadfalls, starving dragons, airless spaces--all await the unwary who cannot read subtle tells in the environment, or see around the walls to notice them lurking.The concentration of traps grows heaviest at the house's center, where four rooms are arranged along an odd crescent hallway wrapped around a central column--or fifth, much larger, room that must only be accessible through them. Each door is marked with an emblem: book, songbird, Throne, analemma.
no subject
He was going to just stay out of the way, like he did during Leviathan. He was going to not do it again and be "golden". He's here because that was never enough; he doesn't know how it will all end, but he knows that it was the right choice.
He doesn't look powerful or fearsome, just a plain and pale figure walking among the twining trees with his companions for this portion of the mission. He's a slender shadow, swallowed along with his companions by the doors that part with a mere glancing touch. He thinks, as the halls spread and beckon, that the owner's mind must be very like his own. His feet trace the steps of the grooved talon-marks, and he turns anxiously at the first touch of the halls' breeze before growing used to it, accepting it as a part of all that surrounds them.
It's like a tide, or the cycle of inhaling and exhaling. It's variant and predictable, automatic and organic.]
My selfish proposal is that we should not split up, but I'm open to argument.
[Reckless to argument, even. L wants to win, but he also desperately wants to feel, whatever the cost, and he's felt precious little since the Emperor's journal melted off his hand.]
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One of his companions - a guy with sharp black hair who looked like he got precious little sleep but with a certain perceptiveness in the eyes (so, someone he could at least identify with a bit) - proposes they don't split up. Kokichi rolls his shoulders, then shrugs lightly, his finger to his lips.]
I'm not too big a fan of splitting up, anyway. Most of the time that leads to someone getting offed, and I didn't plan on dying today. Don't know about either of you, though, but I'd assume the same.
[Not that he trusts anything here, either. Every bit of this has his hair standing on-end. His natural paranoia isz amped up. That's not good. But he's making do.]
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[The fledgling replied, looking between the two others with the tired expression of someone who knew exactly what to avoid out in the field-- especially as it regarded matters of a particularly fantastical nature. Oscar-- in the role of Sweetroll, the liar of a shrike, saw no reason for games or dishonesty in this matter.
There was no way they could win in a full assault. It didn't seem like they were built for it, either.]
I don't plan on dying, either. With people like that... they don't end up in their position without there being some secrets they're hiding. We've just gotta find them.
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He turns his attention to Oscar, the consensus established (barring his willingness to die for the right reason, of course, but he hardly considers this it.
He crouches to more closely examine the grooves, trying to gauge by sight, and then gentle touch, where the grooves are deepest, where the inhabitants may have frequented the most often. His slender, tapered index finger settles, with finality, on a groove with the unbroken, thick certainty of a palm's life-line. It leads to the central hall, which they'll discover shortly, if all are in favor.]
I suggest that the road most traveled is where we should begin. Wherever they spent the most time will lend more readily to a picture of what they valued and how they spent their time. Together, and... perhaps apart.
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Right. That makes sense. Par-tic-ularly interested in that apart bit... [Kokichi nods, hearing L's assessment.] Well. Shall we, gentlemen?
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[Oscar agreed with a heavy sigh-- one that was as overlaid with a dry, teenage wit that only barely covered up an understanding that wasn't ordinary for a teen at all.]
Let's get this cleared up. It can't be worse than some things I've seen.
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Really? You hate them the most? I do too, but... just a little, I can't help loving what I hate the most. It's my inspiration, after all.
[He glances Oscar's way as he stands and straightens as much as his chronically hunched back allows him to, glance lingering for an appraising moment.]
Well then. Let's hope that's true.
[Though L often looks like the youngest person in a room of people he's working with, that's not the case now. He's unambiguously the oldest, so he takes the first step along the gouging grooves, setting foot on a darkened tile with a chip in the left corner.
An arrow whizzes past his face, burying itself in the opposite wall.]
...stop.
[They've sprung the first trap, but fortunately, as long as they stay put, nothing else seems to be happening.]
no subject
I can understand that, too~ without those to oppose, there is no point. It's a cruel, enjoyable cycle.
[He follows after L, looking around with wary but curious eyes. It's quiet inside. Which usually means trouble. The minute Kokichi hears 'stop' and sees the arrow whizzing past, he halts immediately.]
Whoa. They really are going for classic-style traps. Jeez.
[He looks down, trying to see if there's a pattern or something. Some of the tiles seemed faintly darker than others, so maybe...]
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Guess we're on the right track, [He said, with unease.] They wouldn't be so theatrical if we weren't!
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[He says so dryly, sounding slightly annoyed. He likes a good puzzle, but his life on the line? Not so much, especially since he's explicitly no fighter.
Careful not to shift the position of his feet, L slowly bends his knees and sinks to a crouch to get a closer look at the tiles. They all look old and worn; there are darker ones, as Kokichi observed, scattered and spread around lighter ones that are more common, occasional grey ones. They're all lousy with chips and damage.]
Preliminary hypothesis is that the darkest tiles spring the arrows, but... we should still be careful, moving forward. That might not be all there is to it.
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[Kokichi glances warily at the tiles. He mulls over his options, and then puts one foot down on one - one of the grey ones.
He barely misses an arrow flying past him, stumbling back quickly.]
...Well. Those aren't safe either. Wish I'd gotten a rock or something to toss on these and test it out.
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[Oscar knelt as well, moving carefully on unfamiliar feet to not move them and adjust himself accordingly to survey the path before them. Ordinarily, in Trench, he would have had something in his Forever Bag. In this Vision of Nephele... he was still getting used to his senses, his capabilities, and his resources.]
If they're spaced evenly, we can track it and weave our way around them. If they're just random... well, that's another problem.
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If wishes were rocks, it'd save us a headache, perhaps.
[He glances back and forth between both tiles, limited to his human senses, but as one who has generally made the most of those senses.]
I want to confirm something. Are one of you willing to step on the white tiles, and only the white tiles, to see if they also spring a trap? If the pattern holds... the arrow will fire in front of the tile and not over or behind it, so as long as you favor leaning back on a heel, you should avoid a direct hit.
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[He vaguely gestures. He steps forward, onto a white tile...and it's very lucky he is leaning back on a heel, because there goes another arrow.]
Shiiiiiiit. Okay. I'm really testing my luck today.
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[If there was one thing he knew about luck, it was that it could go sour in an instant. Standing again, Oscar searched around the room and perimeter of the area looking for something-- anything-- that stood out to his senses as a shrike.]
So we need to be careful of the gray and white ones.... that's gonna be fun, because most of what we're seeing on the floor right now is gray or white....
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He doesn't think he needs to tell anyone else to stop after another one fires.]
It's confirmed,
[He says, grimly. One step closer to figuring out the puzzle through messy trial and error, but resulting in a momentary setback.]
Grey, white, and black,
[L reminds the shrike, eyes following Oscar as he surveys the perimeter of the room.]
You'd mentioned the possibility of a random distribution, but nothing is truly random. Even algorithms designed to assign things randomly rely on a system... and the owner of the house would have done so, if only to keep him and his chosen guests safe so long as they knew the secret.
[He pinches the bridge of his nose.]
We have a white tile, a grey tile, and a black tile. They share one hidden property in common; there may be one that's not so obvious as the color, but visible to those paying attention.
[Each one has a chipped corner. Different corners; the white is upper left, the black is lower right. The grey is lower left.]
...these tiles have seen better days. What if some of the damage isn't wholly a result of wear and tear?
no subject
Can't believe L decides 'he's an idiot. I actually like him a lot.' Bless.Kokichi sweats out his little incident, but then he listens to L and catches onto what he's saying.
That makes sense in his mind.]
...So you think it might be intentional.
The chippings might be what triggers the traps. Yeah? It's discreet, so I could believe it pretty easily...also makes it harder to decipher if there is some normal damage, but if we just assume most of it is part of the trap...we may be on our way.
[He's not going first this time, though. He's tested his luck enough with these bad boys.]
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[He was listening as well-- and following leads. Going on what Lazarus had said, Oscar scoped out the tiles himself. In theory, the ones with the least amount of damage would be safe to walk on without worry...]
If they're trying to force us to think outside the box, they're doing a good job at it.
[On light, bird like feet he gingerly stepped forward, moving with an economy that was different from either a bird or the farmlad he had been portraying himself as. This was the motion of someone trained to run and fight with speed and grace.
So far, no arrows had been triggered. Success??]
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L is as odd about the way he decides to like or dislike someone as he is odd in every other way.]I think it could well be the chipping.
[He glances up, listening to Oscar's reasoning and nodding his encouragement when the shrike proceeds. He watches, remembering the safe tiles as they're stepped on, and then a pattern does start to emerge.]
Good... that's good; thank you for clearing those! I see it, now.
[He stands, picking his way toward Oscar, choosing some of the same tiles; others are different and also do not result in an arrow firing.]
It's by row, and by color, and the chipped corners rotate counter-clockwise. It's staggered; if the last white one that fired an arrow was in the lower left-hand corner, in that row, then the next one will be in the upper-left. So... two to the left, kokichi, then four forward, step over the grey and proceed three right, two forward, then you can clear the rest with a jump, I'm sure.
[He tilts his chin to Oscar, brows raised, as if to ask if he'd like an easier path from where he stands, as well.]
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Alley-oop~!
[He does, in fact, clear the rest with a jump, and raises his arms up. Perfect 10.]
Complete! Join me, comrades!
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[Not literally. Not in a manner that made sense to normal people. He could see the tiles, but if he focused he could see parts of the mechanisms as well-- and his own mechanical pattern recognition, honed from years of reading everything, filled in the blanks. Skipping ahead on the tiles on his toes, Oscar took his time and kept track of his path before reaching the other side.]
That... that was something!
[It almost felt as if his head was spinning while his thoughts caught up with the sensory input. This was... going to be special.]
(no subject)
The rooms (cw: unreality, horror themes, gore, dead bodies, potential harm to animals)
A well-lit library fills the bubble of a room beyond the door. Living shelves, espaliered up the walls to the curving ceiling, cradle at least a thousand books in their steady grasp. The shelves extend a little ways outward to provide resting places for more strangely proportioned tomes.
Low tables and perches of metal and stone provide places to sit and read. Thirty or more books of military history are scattered among them, leaving gaps on the shelves; some gaps much wider than others, with books shoved apart by a previous patron. Close examination of the gaps sometimes yields hair-fine traceries of enamel in one of three colors, outlining book-width slots. Here and there, a flash of echoing color can be seen in heraldry on an open page or worked into the spine of a book.
A desiccated elven corpse in livery of steel-gray and blood crimson is crushed between two wall panels at the far end of the room. Its talons clutch with rictus agony a book that has grown through its face. The title on the book's cover is barely discernible: An eyewitness description of Haefiltan's Final Stand, with especial attention to troop disposition, as recounted by Grand Marshall C———.
The door of the songbird
Unlike other rooms in the house, which have the rough-hewn natural shapes of caves, this room is a twelve-foot cube lined on every wall with minuscule, densely etched symbols illuminated in enamel and gold. At the far end of the room lies a door, protected by a three-foot-wide open pit filled with stakes that gleam with a faint sheen of liquid. Subtle lines on the walls around the pit resemble the visible tells of traps encountered before, suggesting that would-be jumpers will be caught by something worse than spikes during their leap.
Shining strings of silk and wool and gut hang from hooks at the beginning and end of each complicated phrase. Some attempt was made to connect strings across the room between different phrases--but to what end? The last elf tasked with that lies dead and crushed into the pit, appearing as if someone used its body as a bridge. It's too decayed for such use now, gray and crimson livery turned to rags.
Looking down deep into the pit shows a slot for a false floor that might cover the spikes, but no trigger mechanism visible.
The door of the Throne
This is a pretty little room with a broad skylight and fresh air blowing through it. A two-inch-wide line is etched deeply into the stone of its walls, encircling the central space and spiraling up toward the ceiling. It has been demarcated at regular intervals with an elven glyph for century at every demarcation. One end of the line, low to the ground, has a gorgeously carved sunburst around it. The far end, near the ceiling, fades into a black blotch so deep the actual line becomes invisible.
A hundred--or more--small sliding cabochons lie at the start of the carved line. It is possible to remove and examine them, if one wishes, or even put them in a new order. Each has a symbol etched and illuminated on its surface: A blade, a rose, a drop of blood, an eye, a locust--they all appear to be heraldic representations of Nephele's Monarchs. Setting two cabochons in the line at a distance from each other somehow causes the space between them to fill with color--most commonly a pale anemic red; sometimes, an eye-stunning blue.
Living branches adorn the walls above and below the timeline, host to thread-thin adders that are much larger than they appear, with many more mouths. They show no interest in the room's new occupants, content to sun themselves beneath the skylight instead... Though a tattered shrike corpse lies in the corner with fang-marks in its throat and great chunks gouged out of its out-self.
When anyone touches one of the cabochons, all the snakes lift their heads and regard that individual. They do not move immediately, but there is a sense they are waiting for a wrong move...and may begin a languid slither toward whoever makes too many mistakes in whatever task is needed to open the far door.
The door of the analemma
Beyond the door of the solar path, one steps into hell.
Reality is visibly corrupt at the edges in the first room, with
eyesand whispers peering from all corners. The walls are patchworks of a thousand materials, living and dead flesh among them. Looking down the hall that extends into the distance induces a sickening, sliding feeling of falling in some nameless direction. Proceeding in that direction results in a swift return to the same room--except the entry door is missing, and there's a corpse in steel-and-red in the corner. Taking a branching hall from that same room leads to an endless succession of same rooms, lit with dim and flickering light. Retreating leads to a different same room, that is not the one first exited.The corpse looks the same in every room. It is in a different position every time. Sometimes it is located by a switch on the wall--a switch marked with a skull, a flower, or a feather. In others of the same room, the corpse lies far from the skulls, flowers, and feathers on the floor. Taking the objects spreads a curse of
eyesand unintelligibility if a corresponding switch hasn't been flipped before they're touched.To one who can see outward, the hideous trick of the maze becomes clear. The rooms are stacked kata-ana of each other, separated somehow in one dimension but overlapping in the others. Nine of nineteen rooms have switches. Nine of nineteen have objects. All have one corpse--or is it the same corpse?--and two have doors. A shrine of offering with nine empty slots lies before the last door.
no subject
They're all waiting on the object that is the first safe step - except the one in the room of the Throne. It is waiting on the cabochon for Eyes.
Upon spotting a person, it will cheerfully take its correct position.