godsfire

[onwhatwingswedareaspire]

It is dark.

((Warning: Contains traumatized characters and other content that should be warned for. We will attempt to start keeping up-to-date specific warning list soon))

Comments

[dotted_lines]

Squeeze. "Not now, then."

He unhugs, and resumes walks a little bit to inspect the next wall. "There should be some kind of meaning to these, there are differences between the panels but they don't look like anything."

[onwhatwingswedareaspire]

"They could be a strange abstract," Thorn says, "but somehow I doubt that it has such a simple explanation. --hm." This last is at the partial body. "I am not picking up anything that seems like a cortical stack, but I should check, just in case. I can explain how a stack extraction works while I do that, if you want?"

[dotted_lines]

He nods, and walks a few feet to the side of the body for a better view of the procedure.

[onwhatwingswedareaspire]

Thorn explains as she works. Eventually, she gets to the join between the brain stem and the spinal cord. "And there should be a small slippery cylinder -- about this big --" she demonstrates the size with her hands, "here, but... he doesn't seem to have a stack. Damn it."

She sighs, and turns slightly to start absently cutting out chunks of the brain and feeding them to a cuboid she has retrieved from somewhere.

[dotted_lines]

He nods along with her explanation. "Anything else I should do once I've got the stack? And what are you doing to the brain? I don't have one of those, is there something else that would work instead?"

[onwhatwingswedareaspire]

"Put it somewhere you would not potentially lose it, with insulation if possible, but that tends to only be very important in the presence of large amounts of ionizing radiation; they are fairly durable. Destroy the brain if you can, although in cases of brain-death or infection that is less relevant -- egos can be uploaded for two hours after death, or more if properly preserved. --I do not know what they can get off of a partial brain, but it seems best not to find out." She has been continuing to feed chunks into the disassemblers as she speaks, but at this point she looks up at him.

"I know," she says, worriedly. (He might, by this point, be familiar with the expression she makes when she would like a hug. This one is 'I would like a hug but I am currently extremely unsanitary, that is a bad idea')

[dotted_lines]

"I can do that, yeah."

He notices the expression, realizes she thought he meant a stack, that's, really nice for her to be concerned about, she needs a hug.

...She is still kinda bloody, yeah. He looks around the room again. "I don't see any sources of water in here. Do you have a plan to get that off? I know a minor chant for getting blood out of things?"

[onwhatwingswedareaspire]

"Disassemblers are the best way to do that, but severe trauma is better than nothing," she adds, absently.

"I was going to transform the gloves, and," Thorn inspects herself, "everything else that got some on it -- into something that wouldn't hold that. Although if the chant also handles cerebrospinal fluid that might be more convenient." She seems to realize what expression she was making, and adds, "This should not take too much longer."

[dotted_lines]

"Good. It should work, it works on ichor and hemolymph, and some ectoplasms, which are a lot less like blood."

[onwhatwingswedareaspire]

Thorn nods, and silently finishes her task. Then she wipes off her knife and stands, stepping carefully around the body and her still-working nanofabricator.

"This is on the same scale as the shield you were doing earlier, right? --and you do have a way to handle blood contact?"

[dotted_lines]

"Right." He pulls the bloodstone out of his pocket, then ducks down to dip the rock and his uninjured hand into the convenient pool of blood on the floor.

Slowly, to make it clear what he's doing, he reaches out and smudges a bit more blood on the back of each of Thorn's gloves with the stone, then chants a few words in another language. The blood and cerebrospinal fluid on her clothes faintly red and slowly falls off of her and into the puddle on the floor.

[onwhatwingswedareaspire]

That is much simpler.

Okay then. Can hugs happen now?

[dotted_lines]

Yes. Yes they can.

[onwhatwingswedareaspire]

Then they will.

And Thorn thinks about that thing. If something happened -- Aisilian could apparently recover egos, but that might be interfered with by whatever the reason is that they have not even been contacted. The keeper -- exists, which is a whole concern of its own. There are a few other forms of immortality floating around the forum, but they all require being connected to that system.

"You are not allowed to die, okay?" she whispers, just loud enough for him to hear.

[dotted_lines]

That... that was concern and determination, not a threat. He hugs back.

He nods very slightly, hopefully too small a movement to be picked up by anyone but Thorn.

[onwhatwingswedareaspire]

After a little while, Thorn sighs, unhugs, retrieves her nanofabricator, tucks it under one arm, and continues around the room, inspecting the panelling. At one point she pauses and looks at the floor with a somewhat bemused expression.

[dotted_lines]

Steve walks over from the wall-panel he was inspecting to where she's standing, and follows her gaze to the tiled floor.

[onwhatwingswedareaspire]

The lines of the tiling are, on close inspection, made up of a less swirly, more sharp-edged version of the pattern on the walls. There are also slightly lighter or darker tiles, and slightly discolorations within them, but no coherent pattern is visible.

[dotted_lines]

"Huh. Yeah, that matches the ones on the wall. I can't see what these patterns mean either. But some are a little bit different. Maybe they'd mean something from a different angle?"

He returns to walking around the room, this time looking at the floor instead of the walls.

[onwhatwingswedareaspire]

Thorn nods. "I want to finish looking at the walls, but I will look at that with you after that," she says.

She, too, continues her circuit around the room.

[dotted_lines]

He follows her, looking at the floor and trying to focus his eyes to let him see whatever pattern the discolorations follow. He sometimes looks up at the walls to find which panels' designs match those on the tiles.



Eventually, they reach their starting point, having completed a circuit of the room. The floor suddenly lights with a bright glaring glow, and a noise begins to play.

[onwhatwingswedareaspire]

When the noise starts, Thorn flattens herself against the wall, pressing her hands against her ears. After a few moments where it does not abate, she starts to swear, occasionally interspersed with, "Do not listen to it, do not pay attention to it."

[dotted_lines]

He mimics her actions, she seems to know what's going on. He nods and presses his hands hard against his ears and tries to ignore the noise that leaks through.

[onwhatwingswedareaspire]

She relaxes a fraction when he does that, and inches over closer to his position against the wall.

A few moments later, she stops swearing, and simply leans against the wall and breathes deeply. Then she murmurs: "Out of the night that covers me / black as the pit from pole to pole / I thank whatever gods may be / for my unconqurable soul. / In the fell clutch of circumstance / I--" her voice catches, and the next bit is indistinct up to "--the bludgeonings of chance / My head is bloody, but unbowed. / Beyond this place of wrath and tears / looms but the horror of the shade / and yet--" she chokes again, and the next bit is again unclear "--and shall find me unafraid. / It matters not how strait the gate / how charged with punishments the scroll, / I am the master of my fate / I am the captain of my soul."

Her breathing evens out a little when she finishes, and her shaking reduces somewhat.

[dotted_lines]

Thorn is saying something, but he can't hear what. It looks like she might be chanting? He gets her attention, then slowly moves his foot to hers.

When she doesn't seem to object, he slowly moves his foot against hers, tapping and pressing it. (tap press tap, pause, tap tap press, pause, press press press, pause, press tap press, pause, tap tap press press tap tap)