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The endless waste
Once, this planet teemed with life. It doesn't do that, anymore. The ground is dry and cracked and occasionally broken up by charred remains of trees. There are no birds, no bugs, no living plants - nothing but an empty, endless waste.
With one exception.
But the world is so very big, and the exception so very small. If someone showed up away from it, they could be quite forgiven for thinking this world is completely dead.
with Sable (Kappa)
with Aisilian (Link)
with Grendyne (Rockeye)
with Temple (Curiousdiscoverer)
With one exception.
But the world is so very big, and the exception so very small. If someone showed up away from it, they could be quite forgiven for thinking this world is completely dead.
with Sable (Kappa)
with Aisilian (Link)
with Grendyne (Rockeye)
with Temple (Curiousdiscoverer)
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The thing falling from the sky can't really be said to be a "house." It has no roof or porch, and the asymmetry of the single rounded curve of one corner looks entirely out of place. The single door is the sort of flimsy wooden construction that might be used between rooms, and it has only one window, on the opposite side from the door. Rather than a "house," it's more like someone pulled a single room out of a mansion and dropped it out of the sky.
That "someone" stands on the wrong side of the ceiling, watching a metal tube in his hand with a critical eye. Within the tube, a block - a suspiciously familiar block with a rounded corner - falls even relative to the tube itself, pulled downwards by a magnet in the base.
He clicks his heel, and a strange blurred blade springs from his right toe, a stiletto shaped more like an awl, round except for one missing quadrant. Stabbing it forward, someh◕w the blade catches on thin air, as if anchored on something more fundamental than mere reality. Rather than being torn off his shoe, his entire body all stops at once, without even a trace of shock, pulling him far above the room as it falls ahead of him in the instant before the blade retr◔cts and he falls again as if he had never stopped.
An instant before the house strikes the ground, he clicks a switch on the translucent tube - and with the reversal of the current, the block within comes to a gentle, floating halt.
Below him, the house ceases falling, and then gently settles to the ground. Following after is a single bullet, a flash of light that resolves into a glowing circle that catches the man as he lands in a crouch.
Dusting himself up and getting up, he sighs. Entirely too close, that was.
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A room falling from the sky is rather noticable. A woman looks up from where she is pouring potions into the ground. She stares. Then she finishes pouring out the potion she's on, puts the empty vial back in her pack, and checks the sun.
... Lower than she's like, but she doesn't think she can afford to not immediately go check that out. She brought her waystone and chalk, anyway, not to mention her bow. If she has to get home quickly, she can.
She packs up her potions, checks her protection charms, and sets out to go see... Whatever the hell that was.
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Not just as a matter of proximity. Over the place where the room landed, spiralling clouds are beginning to form. A storm is brewing.
... But, it's strangely contained. Maybe it can be felt from a mile out, but then again it can only be felt from a mile out; considering the way that the clouds are visibly rotation, the speed at the eye wall is well out of proportion to its effect.
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That's sort of concerning.
She retrieves a gem from her pack and her knife. She speeds up her walk, not actively willing to waste energy running just yet, and prods her thumb with the knife, dripping a bit of blood onto the gem. It glows in an ominous fashion.
Walk walk walk walk, is it going to get worse before she gets to the eye?
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Unfortunately, the creator of this storm had not counted on the sand. Blown about by gale force winds, the wasteland dust has become a sandblaster, grinding away anything unfortunate enough to be caught in it with enough force to grind boulders to sand in minutes.
(In his defense, he did check for living beings within the range of his storm first. It's not his fault if people decide to walk into the hurricane.)
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This is what protection charms are for. Protective charms, and transportation charms.
She aims the gem in her hand at the eye, and throws it. While it sails through the air with unnatural speed and purpose, she retrieves a handful more, and gets to bleeding on them. Sort of hard with all the sand, but she manages.
It lands on the ground, and breaks. Vworp. Throw. Vworp. Throw. Ow ow ow sand ow ow ow vworp -
She lands in the center of the eye this time, disheveled and slightly sandblasted and looking sort of annoyed.
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Within sits a simple white room, one corner with a rounded section cut out of it as if it had sat adjacent to some sort of circular lobby, looking quite out of place. Set on its roof, the outline of an empty square made of some steel-silver metal can be seen, with four leads reaching inwards to something out of sight.
In front of the house is a man spreading mulch on the dry wasteland dust in neat rows. Where he has passed, the dust has become rich and loamy soil.
He's currently giving her a peculiar look, as if looking at some strange person who had gone far out of her way to enter a hurricane willingly.
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She rapidly becomes very much less disheveled.
She drops the remains of the charm in her pack, and then motions to him and the hurricane around them. She says a word in another language that sounds like a question. Probably 'What.' Or possibly, 'Why.'
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And then adds a sentence of total gibberish noises, in case the point wasn't made.
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She also sighs. She says another sentence in her language, not actually expecting him to understand her.
Time to consider her options. She could just leave him out here, she supposes, and come with a language poppet later and try to talk to him. But that sounds like quite a lot of effort. She'd really rather not.
Grumbling, she retrieves her map, and motions for the strange falling house man to come look at it.
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She points at him, then at the part of the map where they are. Then she points at a black circle nearby. She shakes her head. Whatever the small black circle is, he doesn't want to be near it, apparently.
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Then, without flinching, he walks into the storm, in the direction of the black circle.
(...is the sand passing through him?)
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She somewhat dubiously puts on the cloak, and follows.
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As far as all her senses are concerned, it is a clear, bright, windless day in the wasteland.
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Okay.
Weird.
She's going to roll with it, though.
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The site contains a node! It's hard to see with ordinary vision, just a faint twist in the light, but it's definitely having an effect on the area around it.
...
It seems to be eating things. That might be alarming.
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... It's nibbling at him. Just a little.
Of course, his existence refuses to change as a result, so it's mostly amusing.
Well, anyway, this is a tad dangerous, isn't it. Better seal it off.
This one's a little tricky, since he's trying to operate three dimensions and his template only covers one, but...
Carefully, he removes a cloth from his backpack. Despite being made fabric, it's rigid as a board, and refuses to be tilted away from vertical; he has to pull it straight out, without rotating it.
Then he walks fearlessly up to the node, and swipes the fabric across it.
As the fabric strikes the node, there is a sudden ... "sound," a sensation that a gong has been rung, without the attendant noise; the trembling in one's bones and in one's ears, but without the actual sound. And when the fabric strikes the node, instead of passing through, it deforms, bending around it.
As the fabric bends, the node seems to recede infinitely into the distance, without actually moving. And then the man wraps the fabric entirely around the node, twisting it off and tying it shut - and the node vanishes entirely.
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What.
No, that is not the appropriate thing to do with the node. Miss walks-into-hurricanes is questioning his life choices. She displays this by making a strangled sound, and face palming.
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Obviously he has no idea what he's messing with. She's going to educate him. This would be a lot easier if she had a translation poppet, but she seriously suspects she cannot leave this man alone for... any period of time. Luckily she has her node note taking supplies. Maybe with those she can overcome the communication barrier, at least a little.
First things first, though. Safety. She retrieves two essence potions, one for her, one for him. She hands him his, and sips at hers while retrieving paper and her quill. She crooks a finger at him to please pay attention.
(Her quill is magic. The potions are magic. Lots of things this woman carries: magic.)
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(He is not particularly surprised by this woman's magic artifacts. Given his home Truth, it would not unduly surprise him to see the magic equivalent of a bear gun strapped to her back.)
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She begins drawing. It becomes apparent that her magic quill can do multiple colors: she draws a green forest with little slightly shitty lollipop trees. She then gets to drawing the important parts: nodes. She draws little black outlined circles, filled with blue scribbles.
A stick figure is added to the world. The stick figure is shown siphoning blue scribbles from the circle, and then shooting what looks to be a lightning bolt. She draws an arrow from the blue scribbles to the lightning bolt, just to make that very clear. Blue scribbles = magic.
She draws a house far away from the circle with blue scribbles, and a stick figure. The circle with blue scribbes is far away from the house. The stick figure makes a frowny face; how tragic. She draws the stick figure next to the circle with blue scribbles, little sticky arms raised above its head. Then, she crosses out the circle, and draws an arrow to a place near the house. There, she draws another circle with blue scribbles. Apparently stick figure man moved the node to a place that is more convenient.
New page. House, again. This time, though, she puts several blue scribble filled circles by the house. She draws the forest, again, and leaves it empty of blue scribble filled circles. She motions to this in an expressive sort of way. There are, in fact, no blue scribble filled circles in a place that is not near the drawn house.
And then she draws a circle in the forest. ... It does not get filled with blue scribbles. She draws an unhappy face in the circle, instead. She motions from the unhappy face circle to the node that he's covered with a cloth, and the black circles on the map. These are the same.
Blue arrows are drawn from the forest into the unhappy circle. She draws an arrow to another part of the paper, and redraws the unhappy circle, and the blue arrows. The trees she redraws, but without their leaves. Instead she leaves empty branches. She does not color the ground green, she colors it brown. She points to this, and then motions expressively around them. That did this.
She goes to the part of the paper that has multiple circles. She draws the blue arrows, siphoning out of several of the circles and into the one in the center. She draws black arrows from the outer circle to the inner circle, and then an arrow to the last blank space on the paper. She draws the circle - much bigger this time. She scribbles it with blue... And then she draws a black smiley face with angry eyebrows overtop it. She motions from angry eyebrow circle to the red circles on her map. These are the same.
She draws blue arrows towards the angry eyebrow circle. She redraws the house, but tipped to its side and its roof unattached, and draws a black arrow from it to the angry eyebrow circle. Apparently the angry eyebrow circle eats houses. The artist declines to draw illustrative stick figures, but if her guest is paying attention, he can probably guess what happened. Lots of people died, probably.
New paper. She draws an unhappy circle. Next to it, she draws a stick figure that has orange hair (and silently is glad that she has such a distinguishing feature), and gives the stick figure a scribbly blue shield. She taps the potion she's still occasionally sipping, and the points at the blue shield. She draws blue arrows from the blue shield to the unhappy circle. But, instead she gives her little stick figure self a smiley face. Obviously, stick figure her is fine.
Stick figure her gets a thing that looks like a potion! She draws blue scribbles from it, and then little blue arrows from it towards the unhappy circle. She draws a black arrow from the circle to another part of the page, and draws the circle again, this time with blue scribbles in it. Then, her stick figure self is drawn again, stick arms above her head and with a smiley face. Obviously this thing is the ideal. She motions from this to the black dots with X's on the map.
Then, she gestures to the node nearby. We need to do this to that.
Does he understand?
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What he doesn't understand is the nature of their source of magic. It's certainly not mana, or there wouldn't be anything left at all; if there was empty space left over where a planet used to be, he'd consider them lucky, if those dots were manavores.
Reaching into his endless pocket, he pulls out ... a spatula.
It's. Mildly gaudy-looking, matte black and edged with a glimmering blue crystal, and its handle is wrapped in what looks like platinum, if platinum was as supple as leather.
And with it, as if he was flipping an egg, he digs into the drawing the woman has made, and brings out one of the blue squiggles. Simply pulling the drawing out of the page, like digging up a worm.
He peers at it for a moment, then flips it - and the strange drawing flies up and comes down as a tiny, tiny blob of pure essence.
... It's not real, though. It's already simply - vanishing, ceasing to exist.
It seems to be enough for him, though, as he frowns mildly at it.
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