The endless waste

[aestrix]

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)

Comments

[light_another_life]

"Ah. Yes, I can see how it would be. ... If you can ever get back to your world, and if connecting lakewalkers to the dream world doesn't have any nasty effects, I do see an obvious way to, er, cheat the system. Though it might not work."

[greatestgift]

"That would be an enormous help. If I can get back to my world."

[light_another_life]

"Yeah. It might also be possible for me to make lakewalker bone essence plants, but - no guarantees there, either."

[greatestgift]

"That would help a little but not very much, especially compared to the other thing. Now, if you could make an essence plant for primed knives, that would be amazing, but I have no idea if that even makes any sense. I'd have to understand how your essence plants work."

[light_another_life]

"Yeah. And I'd have to see a primed knife, I think, to know if I can even do it. Sharing a death is such a strange concept, I don't know how it translates to terms that I know."

[greatestgift]

"I've felt a primed knife before. They're... I don't know how to explain, certainly not to somebody without groundsense."

[light_another_life]

"Okay. If it's unique it might actually need a primed knife sacrifice to make the essence plants."

[greatestgift]

"Does that mean 'sacrifice a primed knife to find out if they can be duplicated', or 'find out they can be duplicated and then sacrifice a primed knife to start making more'? Big difference there."

[light_another_life]

"Second thing, thankfully."

[greatestgift]

"Good. It will be much easier to get somebody to cough one up that way."

[light_another_life]

"I bet."

Flight's pretty fast. They're almost to the node.

"Here's a good spot to land and drink potions, we're almost there."

[greatestgift]

"I think I can tell," she says. "Ugh. It's not quite blight, but it's uncomfortably close."

Landing!

[light_another_life]

"Yay. It sounds uncomfortable to feel."

She retrieves the essence potions and offers one to Sable.

[greatestgift]

Potion!

"...Weird," she says, frowning down at herself. "Like a bubble of extra ground. I wonder if these would be useful for malice fights, or if it would just make you a great big shiny target..."

[light_another_life]

"I mean, great big shiny targets could be useful, if you have a way to kill them," she points out. "Like, for example, replenishable primed knives..."

[greatestgift]

"Being a great big shiny target also gets you ground-ripped, which is extremely uncomfortable," she says. "Maybe combined with a ground shield, though."

[light_another_life]

"Ground ripped?"

(Potion.)

[greatestgift]

"Malices can pull big chunks of ground out of things around them. Some Lakewalkers can do it too. The way malices do it it hurts like you wouldn't believe, if it doesn't kill you right away, which it usually does. But my parents invented something called a ground shield that sort of... makes your ground slippery so nothing can grab it."

[light_another_life]

"Huh. Convenient. Might be useful for hungry nodes."

[greatestgift]

"Maybe!"

[light_another_life]

"I can hope!"

Back to the air they go. They have a sickly node to tend to.

"I'm hesitating to actually call essence ground, because while they act the same sort of way, they might have huge glaring differences we don't notice until later."

[greatestgift]

"They're not the same thing," says Sable. "But I think they're very, very closely related."

[light_another_life]

She nods.

Is that the node up ahead? It certainly feels like it!

[greatestgift]

It absolutely feels like it. Ugh ugh ugh.

[light_another_life]

"Are you okay?"