Session 115: It Was Written In The Stars
Previously, Across the Horizon…
The Starfall rests in Alterna, just as it did before the party found it. This time, though, it sports a full crew tasked with keeping the ship safe and ready to depart at a moment’s notice.
Our brave adventurers have returned to the ravaged capital of the long-dead empire in search of the Heart of Sabik, a missing component of their airship. The last time they came here, Orrey lost his sister, his sister’s boy-that-is-a-friend’s ship, a tower full of holy relics to the Twelve, a series of sketches, and potentially his life, though that part is unclear. (Of the others, Linnet lost her composure, Yves lost his train of thought, Isa lost her patience, and Bast lost the opportunity to strand everyone else and take the airship for himself.)
Their first destination after landing the Starfall in Golem’s forest was a building Orrey identified as a university, a series of structures that showed plenty of damage from the cataclysm that destroyed the empire. One building, a husk of melted glass, occupied everyone’s attention. Just as Bast called a warning out to Linnet, the ship’s combination-therapist-and-healer poked the misshapen glass building with her foot, hoping it wouldn’t react.
We join our brave adventurers...
...as the building reacts.
**
Linnet's foot meets very little resistance when it touches the glass.
The surface is soft, rippling with the pressure from her gentle tap.
The second ripple marks the building's surface curving out and around to close on her leg entirely.
The twelve-foot-tall mass of melted glass refracts itself forward, moving to encircle and engulf Linnet.
Linnet screams and attempts an uncoordinated and unplanned levitation out of the way. It doesn't work.
"Oh, huh," says Yves, "I'm not sure if that's great? Maybe it just wants to make friends? I mean--do you want, uh, help?"
With an elaborate balletic twist and a heroic burst of effort, Linnet wrenches free of the glass...thing?...and shoots fifteen feet straight into the air. Only just in time, she catches herself before screaming again and instead stage-whispers, "The hell was that?"
"Do we fight or do we run?" Orrey looks to Isa for direction.
It stretches up after Linnet, following the path she took through the air, lengthening without seeming to move at all.
Isa tilts her head up to take in the scope of the...opposing force. "Depends on how far it can chase us..."
"Not far if I can Immobilize it!" Orrey says, pulling out his watch as he watches the building...chase? Linnet.
"Don't think we want anything from it. Except to leave us the fuck alone." Bast accompanies the expletive with a shot at the middle of the segment stretching out after Linnet.
The crossbow bolt pierces the glass and does not emerge from the far side, completely absorbed. There is a slight demarcation near the impact spot.
Isa sees Linnet yank painfully free, and Bast shoot fruitlessly through. Whatever expression she might have is concealed by her helmet, but it's probably not a happy one. She comes to some decision, and raises her right arm, mailed hand open. White light radiates out from her palm, catching Linnet at the edge of its radius and giving everyone else a sense of health and well-being, not intended to cure or treat any disease.
The opposing force does not react at all to the magic happening around it but not to it.
The opposing force instead continues to follow Linnet. The blob of a building moves from its original position, leaving a trail of glassed rubble in its wake, stripping the grass from the cracks as it moves, refracting light as it stretches.
"This is not a building anymore!" calls Linnet to the party as she panics, feeling a tendril of glass engulf her other leg this time. "What the hell is animating it?"
Orrey knew something would chase after Linnet today, but he had seen no image of whatever it would be. Nevertheless, the spell is ready and focused through his watch, firing a net of magical lines over the opposing force, and dragging an anchoring force into the ground to Immobilize it.
The net reflects off of the opposing force's cloudy surface, coming to rest on Orrey himself, Immobilizing him.
The spell impacting the curiosity returned a different result than the bolt from Bast's crossbow.
Orrey's eyes widen as he watches the net fly back at him and hold him in place. He takes a deep breath and then unslings the Armageddon, readying the Orb to defend himself.
Bast follows the spell's rebound trajectory with a wince, digging in his own bag of tricks for anything more useful.
"That is not the way we deal with new acquaintances!" Yves says sternly to the, uh, substance, which is probably composed of matter, maybe, in some form and/or forms. "Even if unwanted touching is startling and all, you can be a lot more polite about expressing yourself without trying to absorb people over it! Now settle back down before someone has to get really stern about this." He points quite, well, pointedly at the blob's latest attempt to assimilate Linnet. "Drop that! Sit! Stay!"
The opposing force pays no attention to Yves's demands.
"Yves!" Isa yells, "appropriate negotiations!"
"Everyone on me!" Bast drops a grenade at his feet, glowing with Orrey's signature purple light.
Orrey's watch winds up in a crazy spin as it sends energy into Bast's explosive.
"Oh! Right! Sorry!" Yves calls back to Isa.
The opposing force does not react at all to the magic happening around it but not to it.
(Linnet did not join "everyone on me," as she is still fleeing.)
"Okay, the hell with this." Linnet wrenches the Akademia Deck holster off her leg - fortunately, the one not currently glass-slimed - and slides it over her wrist instead. Then, she draws a card, mutters something rude, and stares at it for a confused beat before pointing it at the glass monster. "Let go of me, you hunk of junk!"
"Hailstorms. I sort of hoped that would work." The card has fizzled out of Linnet's hand and, presumably, reappeared in the Akademia Deck.
Isa's growl of frustration is made low and animal by the reverberations of her helmet, and she leaps up towards Linnet and her unwelcome pseudopod. "Hold on!" she yells, reaching a hand to the sylph as she tries to kick and pull at the opposing force.
There's a creak, the sound of a ground-glass joint slipping free, and then Linnet floats free in the air again. "Go!"
The opposing force rebounds, rippling like a rock just fell into a pond from a great height, and then it continues stretching up after Isa and Linnet. As Isa is closer, the tendrils first stretch out to her, but then repel, instead drawing back toward itself for the moment. The slight layer of frost evaporates.
Linnet gives a frightened nod and leaps away in a random direction, eyes still fixed on the glass...thing.
It continues to move, leaving that trail of glass over the fractured cobblestones. It pursues Linnet, attempting to avoid Isa as its form is drawn after the retreating sylph, unable to cover the ground in time.
Orrey did NOT see the unintended consequences of repeatedly Immobilizing this horrible glass thing...but the net is cast again over it. He winces as he watches it bounce again.
Orrey aims the Armageddon and fires into the center of the glass blob, sending his frustrations along with the bullet.
The Orb bobs and circles around Orrey, firing two blasts of Holy light at the thing.
The Holy bullets crack the glass, and the surface suddenly swirls into a thousand pinpricks of darkness, emitting a sound like garden shears down a window.
Yves takes a little calming breath, and does his best to change his tactics based on Isa's helpful advice. Appropriate negotiations. Right. "I'm sorry," he says to the blob, "that was rude and downright imperious of me. Let me try again. This is all very upsetting and seems like it might be escalating to an unreasonable level. Do you think we might discuss the matter instead? I've been speaking with Golem recently, and we came to a mutually beneficial agreement together, so maybe I could do the same with you. Yes, we may be in your territory, but we really are here with the best of intentions, at least if you average out across the officers as a whole. I have a chart somewhere where I did the math after I figured out how to assign numerical scores to ethical approaches to crisis problem-solving, let me see..." He starts fishing through his satchel.
Linnet nearly tumbles over herself in midair as she wraps her arms around her head to block the screeching.
"NOT WHAT I MEANT" comes a metallic yell from afar.
Orrey shudders after causing that noise, and shakes his head in total confusion at the interplay between Isa and Yves.
"...oh, buddy," Yves says to the rampaging glassy blob that's trying to eat one of his coworkers, his voice full of entirely sincere emotion. Then he turns around (rapidly), glances across the terrain (ditto), and lets a wave of crackling fire surge out of his hands toward a stand of old trees, one of them dead and half-fallen. Not the Golem type of trees, though. He's pretty clear on that point.
This has an immediate effect.
The glass husk shimmers past Yves, toward the fire.
Linnet spins around to watch, not floating any closer. "Um. Score one for diplomacy, I guess?"
The form splits apart as it draws nearer, enveloping the fire completely.
The glass hardens, then darkens.
As they watch, the opposing force turns to stone, and all is still.
"Should we run, now?" Orrey asks again. "I feel like we should leave it alone..."
"It just needed a hug," Yves says earnestly. "...or, well, maybe not a literal hug? The literal hugging was very impolite, and all that, but it was kinda chilly and lonely and anyway, I think maybe we should be more careful about what we touch. Yes, I realize I'm the one saying it, but still."
"Run. Yes." Isa's tone brooks no nonsense.
"Um. Right. Into the other building?" Linnet displays no intention of coming closer than fifteen feet off the ground, at least until a concrete plan is formed.
Orrey glances down at his Immobilized legs. "Just need a little...second..."
Yves makes a sympathetic patting motion toward the hardened force, but from a very safe distance such that actual physical contact is not in any way likely to occur.
There is one other intact small building -- it looks completely intact, which is fortunate -- and then the central building, much larger, much more ruined.
Bast glances back toward the central building. "Well, let's hope whoever's out there...was blind and deaf for a while."
"As with our crew. Right, one of you people go first this time," pronounces the sylph firmly.
"No time," Isa says to Orrey, and throws him over a shoulder to head for the intact building. Nathan/Orrey Orrey dismisses the Orb and slings the Armageddon on his back again, adjusting his pack and satchel as he's jounced across the ground. Fade/Yves Yves hurries after Isa. See, he's very good at taking constructive advice during crisis situations! He gave himself two points for that on the ethics chart and everything. Ivan/Bast Bast, after checking that Linnet is free to move and isn't about to bleed out, makes haste for the intact building. Amanda/Linnet Linnet consents to approach normal people height and enters the intact building as well, still not touching the floor. "Why in all the layers of all the hells did I just get almost digested by an animated glass building?"
"Orrey, I don't suppose you have a god on standby who can answer 'what the hell is going on here,' do you?"
Isa sets Orrey down once it's clear that he's mobile again, and just says "Cursed."
"Us or the building?" asks the rattled sylph, dryly.
"That poor building," Yves says.
"Everywhere," Isa corrects.
"Oh, yes, that would make sense too," Yves says. "...I should've had everyone wear gloves. And maybe goggles."
The third small building, the one that did not house a reflective blob of glassed destruction or the one that had been completely destroyed with only a flooded crater left behind, is almost entirely empty. Everything inside is a shade of black or white, including the floor, ceiling, and walls, as well as the three masks.
"Seemed like..." Bast pauses. "It wasn't just one thing, but many. Hundreds?" He frowns, leaning against a wall to catch his breath. "...and what is going on here."
Isa considers the masks. "Yves? Friends of yours?"
They are large masks, five feet tall and three feet wide. Ceramic instead of wood or metal, painted with geological formations across the smooth faces.
Orrey sighs and slowly rotates the Holy symbols he's carrying. "I could ask..."
"I don't know," Yves says, walking straight forward like he's completely forgotten what he just said about the whole 'touching' thing.
"I'm not sure who to ask, though." Orrey says quietly, trying to decide.
"Oh no you don't." Bast lunges forward and grabs the back of Yves' jacket.
Linnet hovers next to the door, ready to flee should one of the masks come to life and attack. Or, y'know, to rescue Yves. Fifty-fifty.
Yves jerks to a halt at the pull on his jacket. "I wasn't going to poke anyone," he says, in a wounded tone. "Just ask them nicely!"
There is something incredibly strange(r) about Yves.
It is the same thing that is strange about everyone inside of the building, in fact.
There is no color in this building. Everything is in black and white, including those adventurers exploring Alterna.
{editor's note: except not this time, because doing this properly would require different fonts and WA doesn't have those. Sry! ~Amanda}
There is no sound inside this building; everything is perfectly silent.
Yves's words instead float above his head, written in the sky as text.
Bast watches Yves' mouth move as the Viera turns around, and then looks up. And up some more. And then points above Yves' head with a very put-upon expression.
Orrey claps, loudly.
Above Orrey, in flat text: clap
"Oh that's not right at all..." Orrey says in text.
Above Linnet, in equally flat text: helpless laughter
Above Isa, ". . ."
Oh! captions Yves, delighted. That's new!
Bast's formerly green pom sweeps through a ...what as it moves back and forth.
Linnet shrugs and twists around, scanning the room for anything useful besides the masks. Like, say, books. Or instructions.
There is nothing else in here. No windows, no books, no furniture, no doors (beyond the one through which you entered, which remains open, the outside the only source of color here).
Linnet shrugs and turns back to the party. Not much use staying in here, unless Yves strikes up a conversation.
Yves holds his hands up to show Bast that he's putting them into his pockets, and then sidles a little closer to those masks. Not touching, see? Let me ask them--uh, write to them? Express to them that--okay look I'll just see if they're friendly. Or at least not hostile. Or have needs and/or desires they might be able to articulate in some manner and which can be ethically fulfilled, you know how it goes...
Less flannelling, more diplomacy, Thunderbun. If it's possible for a font to look affectionate, this does.
Bast observes this with unreserved skepticism. Or maybe they can't read and we need to go yell at them from outside.
Let him try, what could it hurt?
Isa's head turns towards Linnet. You ask that here?
Look, talking solved the last problem. Sort of. Combined with fire. Linnet folds her legs into a lotus position - two feet off the ground - and rubs the bits that had been encased in glass.
I mean, the last time something here sort of tried to absorb me, it turned out pretty well... Yves keeps his hands firmly in his pockets, all the same. Eric/Isa Isa shakes her head, and turns to keep watch out the doorway.
Orrey pulls out his colored pencils and checks their color.
Many, many shades of grey. They are all labeled with their normal colors, though.
Yves sighs. (Well, the text over his head writes {sigh} in letters that rapidly fade out.) These aren't like the ones I know, he captions. They never were. And they're not anything now except--corpses? Maybe more like skeletons. Poor things. He turns his back on the masks, and heads back toward the door.
...so we're not going to poke them?
Look, when the resident mask whisperer says there's no point in talking to the masks...
Linnet stays inside an extra minute or two, scribbling rough sketches of the masks. You never know. They could come in handy.
Outside, Bast looks at Yves inquisitively. "Any idea which ones these were?"
Yves shakes his head, once he's back in color and sound. "Those aren't Espers. Weren't? Aren't now, never were. I'm not sure what they were, though I think they were alive once, or something that those were part of was alive, but that's just... what's left over."
"So...Espers can die?" Orrey asks solemnly.
"Those aren't--they're something else. I don't know what. I'm not a, a cryptobiologist! Probably. I mean, I don't think I am, talking with Guardian Forces and making some mask terrariums doesn't really count. I think. Probably. Depends on how cryptobiologist is being defined." Yves clears his throat. "Anyway." Ivan/Bast "If these weren't Espers, jury's still out. Though I wonder about Alexander." Bast shades his eyes with a hand, looking for movement in the central building.
"If they're not Espers, could that have been something related to the masks anyway? Some sort of experiment?" Isa asks.
Linnet finally follows the rest of the party out. "Why would a university have a creepy color-draining storage shed just for three masks?"
"Study? Or some experiment gone wrong, maybe." Orrey says, eyeing the central building.
"Or the masks could be related to them," Yves says grimly. "I don't know. I need a timeline! I'm not a historian of--okay, maybe I need to expand my field of scientific research, I can't just keep denying areas of focus because I haven't done much in them yet. Remind me when we're done here to add about a dozen more journal subscriptions to the ship library."
"Probably for the same reason one of the buildings is a lonely glass thing now." Bast frowns, apparently not seeing what he was looking for.
"Funding ran out."
The Starfall rests in Alterna, just as it did before the party found it. This time, though, it sports a full crew tasked with keeping the ship safe and ready to depart at a moment’s notice.
Our brave adventurers have returned to the ravaged capital of the long-dead empire in search of the Heart of Sabik, a missing component of their airship. The last time they came here, Orrey lost his sister, his sister’s boy-that-is-a-friend’s ship, a tower full of holy relics to the Twelve, a series of sketches, and potentially his life, though that part is unclear. (Of the others, Linnet lost her composure, Yves lost his train of thought, Isa lost her patience, and Bast lost the opportunity to strand everyone else and take the airship for himself.)
Their first destination after landing the Starfall in Golem’s forest was a building Orrey identified as a university, a series of structures that showed plenty of damage from the cataclysm that destroyed the empire. One building, a husk of melted glass, occupied everyone’s attention. Just as Bast called a warning out to Linnet, the ship’s combination-therapist-and-healer poked the misshapen glass building with her foot, hoping it wouldn’t react.
We join our brave adventurers...
...as the building reacts.
**
Linnet's foot meets very little resistance when it touches the glass.
The surface is soft, rippling with the pressure from her gentle tap.
The second ripple marks the building's surface curving out and around to close on her leg entirely.
The twelve-foot-tall mass of melted glass refracts itself forward, moving to encircle and engulf Linnet.
Linnet screams and attempts an uncoordinated and unplanned levitation out of the way. It doesn't work.
"Oh, huh," says Yves, "I'm not sure if that's great? Maybe it just wants to make friends? I mean--do you want, uh, help?"
With an elaborate balletic twist and a heroic burst of effort, Linnet wrenches free of the glass...thing?...and shoots fifteen feet straight into the air. Only just in time, she catches herself before screaming again and instead stage-whispers, "The hell was that?"
"Do we fight or do we run?" Orrey looks to Isa for direction.
It stretches up after Linnet, following the path she took through the air, lengthening without seeming to move at all.
Isa tilts her head up to take in the scope of the...opposing force. "Depends on how far it can chase us..."
"Not far if I can Immobilize it!" Orrey says, pulling out his watch as he watches the building...chase? Linnet.
"Don't think we want anything from it. Except to leave us the fuck alone." Bast accompanies the expletive with a shot at the middle of the segment stretching out after Linnet.
The crossbow bolt pierces the glass and does not emerge from the far side, completely absorbed. There is a slight demarcation near the impact spot.
Isa sees Linnet yank painfully free, and Bast shoot fruitlessly through. Whatever expression she might have is concealed by her helmet, but it's probably not a happy one. She comes to some decision, and raises her right arm, mailed hand open. White light radiates out from her palm, catching Linnet at the edge of its radius and giving everyone else a sense of health and well-being, not intended to cure or treat any disease.
The opposing force does not react at all to the magic happening around it but not to it.
The opposing force instead continues to follow Linnet. The blob of a building moves from its original position, leaving a trail of glassed rubble in its wake, stripping the grass from the cracks as it moves, refracting light as it stretches.
"This is not a building anymore!" calls Linnet to the party as she panics, feeling a tendril of glass engulf her other leg this time. "What the hell is animating it?"
Orrey knew something would chase after Linnet today, but he had seen no image of whatever it would be. Nevertheless, the spell is ready and focused through his watch, firing a net of magical lines over the opposing force, and dragging an anchoring force into the ground to Immobilize it.
The net reflects off of the opposing force's cloudy surface, coming to rest on Orrey himself, Immobilizing him.
The spell impacting the curiosity returned a different result than the bolt from Bast's crossbow.
Orrey's eyes widen as he watches the net fly back at him and hold him in place. He takes a deep breath and then unslings the Armageddon, readying the Orb to defend himself.
Bast follows the spell's rebound trajectory with a wince, digging in his own bag of tricks for anything more useful.
"That is not the way we deal with new acquaintances!" Yves says sternly to the, uh, substance, which is probably composed of matter, maybe, in some form and/or forms. "Even if unwanted touching is startling and all, you can be a lot more polite about expressing yourself without trying to absorb people over it! Now settle back down before someone has to get really stern about this." He points quite, well, pointedly at the blob's latest attempt to assimilate Linnet. "Drop that! Sit! Stay!"
The opposing force pays no attention to Yves's demands.
"Yves!" Isa yells, "appropriate negotiations!"
"Everyone on me!" Bast drops a grenade at his feet, glowing with Orrey's signature purple light.
Orrey's watch winds up in a crazy spin as it sends energy into Bast's explosive.
"Oh! Right! Sorry!" Yves calls back to Isa.
The opposing force does not react at all to the magic happening around it but not to it.
(Linnet did not join "everyone on me," as she is still fleeing.)
"Okay, the hell with this." Linnet wrenches the Akademia Deck holster off her leg - fortunately, the one not currently glass-slimed - and slides it over her wrist instead. Then, she draws a card, mutters something rude, and stares at it for a confused beat before pointing it at the glass monster. "Let go of me, you hunk of junk!"
"Hailstorms. I sort of hoped that would work." The card has fizzled out of Linnet's hand and, presumably, reappeared in the Akademia Deck.
Isa's growl of frustration is made low and animal by the reverberations of her helmet, and she leaps up towards Linnet and her unwelcome pseudopod. "Hold on!" she yells, reaching a hand to the sylph as she tries to kick and pull at the opposing force.
There's a creak, the sound of a ground-glass joint slipping free, and then Linnet floats free in the air again. "Go!"
The opposing force rebounds, rippling like a rock just fell into a pond from a great height, and then it continues stretching up after Isa and Linnet. As Isa is closer, the tendrils first stretch out to her, but then repel, instead drawing back toward itself for the moment. The slight layer of frost evaporates.
Linnet gives a frightened nod and leaps away in a random direction, eyes still fixed on the glass...thing.
It continues to move, leaving that trail of glass over the fractured cobblestones. It pursues Linnet, attempting to avoid Isa as its form is drawn after the retreating sylph, unable to cover the ground in time.
Orrey did NOT see the unintended consequences of repeatedly Immobilizing this horrible glass thing...but the net is cast again over it. He winces as he watches it bounce again.
Orrey aims the Armageddon and fires into the center of the glass blob, sending his frustrations along with the bullet.
The Orb bobs and circles around Orrey, firing two blasts of Holy light at the thing.
The Holy bullets crack the glass, and the surface suddenly swirls into a thousand pinpricks of darkness, emitting a sound like garden shears down a window.
Yves takes a little calming breath, and does his best to change his tactics based on Isa's helpful advice. Appropriate negotiations. Right. "I'm sorry," he says to the blob, "that was rude and downright imperious of me. Let me try again. This is all very upsetting and seems like it might be escalating to an unreasonable level. Do you think we might discuss the matter instead? I've been speaking with Golem recently, and we came to a mutually beneficial agreement together, so maybe I could do the same with you. Yes, we may be in your territory, but we really are here with the best of intentions, at least if you average out across the officers as a whole. I have a chart somewhere where I did the math after I figured out how to assign numerical scores to ethical approaches to crisis problem-solving, let me see..." He starts fishing through his satchel.
Linnet nearly tumbles over herself in midair as she wraps her arms around her head to block the screeching.
"NOT WHAT I MEANT" comes a metallic yell from afar.
Orrey shudders after causing that noise, and shakes his head in total confusion at the interplay between Isa and Yves.
"...oh, buddy," Yves says to the rampaging glassy blob that's trying to eat one of his coworkers, his voice full of entirely sincere emotion. Then he turns around (rapidly), glances across the terrain (ditto), and lets a wave of crackling fire surge out of his hands toward a stand of old trees, one of them dead and half-fallen. Not the Golem type of trees, though. He's pretty clear on that point.
This has an immediate effect.
The glass husk shimmers past Yves, toward the fire.
Linnet spins around to watch, not floating any closer. "Um. Score one for diplomacy, I guess?"
The form splits apart as it draws nearer, enveloping the fire completely.
The glass hardens, then darkens.
As they watch, the opposing force turns to stone, and all is still.
"Should we run, now?" Orrey asks again. "I feel like we should leave it alone..."
"It just needed a hug," Yves says earnestly. "...or, well, maybe not a literal hug? The literal hugging was very impolite, and all that, but it was kinda chilly and lonely and anyway, I think maybe we should be more careful about what we touch. Yes, I realize I'm the one saying it, but still."
"Run. Yes." Isa's tone brooks no nonsense.
"Um. Right. Into the other building?" Linnet displays no intention of coming closer than fifteen feet off the ground, at least until a concrete plan is formed.
Orrey glances down at his Immobilized legs. "Just need a little...second..."
Yves makes a sympathetic patting motion toward the hardened force, but from a very safe distance such that actual physical contact is not in any way likely to occur.
There is one other intact small building -- it looks completely intact, which is fortunate -- and then the central building, much larger, much more ruined.
Bast glances back toward the central building. "Well, let's hope whoever's out there...was blind and deaf for a while."
"As with our crew. Right, one of you people go first this time," pronounces the sylph firmly.
"No time," Isa says to Orrey, and throws him over a shoulder to head for the intact building. Nathan/Orrey Orrey dismisses the Orb and slings the Armageddon on his back again, adjusting his pack and satchel as he's jounced across the ground. Fade/Yves Yves hurries after Isa. See, he's very good at taking constructive advice during crisis situations! He gave himself two points for that on the ethics chart and everything. Ivan/Bast Bast, after checking that Linnet is free to move and isn't about to bleed out, makes haste for the intact building. Amanda/Linnet Linnet consents to approach normal people height and enters the intact building as well, still not touching the floor. "Why in all the layers of all the hells did I just get almost digested by an animated glass building?"
"Orrey, I don't suppose you have a god on standby who can answer 'what the hell is going on here,' do you?"
Isa sets Orrey down once it's clear that he's mobile again, and just says "Cursed."
"Us or the building?" asks the rattled sylph, dryly.
"That poor building," Yves says.
"Everywhere," Isa corrects.
"Oh, yes, that would make sense too," Yves says. "...I should've had everyone wear gloves. And maybe goggles."
The third small building, the one that did not house a reflective blob of glassed destruction or the one that had been completely destroyed with only a flooded crater left behind, is almost entirely empty. Everything inside is a shade of black or white, including the floor, ceiling, and walls, as well as the three masks.
"Seemed like..." Bast pauses. "It wasn't just one thing, but many. Hundreds?" He frowns, leaning against a wall to catch his breath. "...and what is going on here."
Isa considers the masks. "Yves? Friends of yours?"
They are large masks, five feet tall and three feet wide. Ceramic instead of wood or metal, painted with geological formations across the smooth faces.
Orrey sighs and slowly rotates the Holy symbols he's carrying. "I could ask..."
"I don't know," Yves says, walking straight forward like he's completely forgotten what he just said about the whole 'touching' thing.
"I'm not sure who to ask, though." Orrey says quietly, trying to decide.
"Oh no you don't." Bast lunges forward and grabs the back of Yves' jacket.
Linnet hovers next to the door, ready to flee should one of the masks come to life and attack. Or, y'know, to rescue Yves. Fifty-fifty.
Yves jerks to a halt at the pull on his jacket. "I wasn't going to poke anyone," he says, in a wounded tone. "Just ask them nicely!"
There is something incredibly strange(r) about Yves.
It is the same thing that is strange about everyone inside of the building, in fact.
There is no color in this building. Everything is in black and white, including those adventurers exploring Alterna.
{editor's note: except not this time, because doing this properly would require different fonts and WA doesn't have those. Sry! ~Amanda}
There is no sound inside this building; everything is perfectly silent.
Yves's words instead float above his head, written in the sky as text.
Bast watches Yves' mouth move as the Viera turns around, and then looks up. And up some more. And then points above Yves' head with a very put-upon expression.
Orrey claps, loudly.
Above Orrey, in flat text: clap
"Oh that's not right at all..." Orrey says in text.
Above Linnet, in equally flat text: helpless laughter
Above Isa, ". . ."
Oh! captions Yves, delighted. That's new!
Bast's formerly green pom sweeps through a ...what as it moves back and forth.
Linnet shrugs and twists around, scanning the room for anything useful besides the masks. Like, say, books. Or instructions.
There is nothing else in here. No windows, no books, no furniture, no doors (beyond the one through which you entered, which remains open, the outside the only source of color here).
Linnet shrugs and turns back to the party. Not much use staying in here, unless Yves strikes up a conversation.
Yves holds his hands up to show Bast that he's putting them into his pockets, and then sidles a little closer to those masks. Not touching, see? Let me ask them--uh, write to them? Express to them that--okay look I'll just see if they're friendly. Or at least not hostile. Or have needs and/or desires they might be able to articulate in some manner and which can be ethically fulfilled, you know how it goes...
Less flannelling, more diplomacy, Thunderbun. If it's possible for a font to look affectionate, this does.
Bast observes this with unreserved skepticism. Or maybe they can't read and we need to go yell at them from outside.
Let him try, what could it hurt?
Isa's head turns towards Linnet. You ask that here?
Look, talking solved the last problem. Sort of. Combined with fire. Linnet folds her legs into a lotus position - two feet off the ground - and rubs the bits that had been encased in glass.
I mean, the last time something here sort of tried to absorb me, it turned out pretty well... Yves keeps his hands firmly in his pockets, all the same. Eric/Isa Isa shakes her head, and turns to keep watch out the doorway.
Orrey pulls out his colored pencils and checks their color.
Many, many shades of grey. They are all labeled with their normal colors, though.
Yves sighs. (Well, the text over his head writes {sigh} in letters that rapidly fade out.) These aren't like the ones I know, he captions. They never were. And they're not anything now except--corpses? Maybe more like skeletons. Poor things. He turns his back on the masks, and heads back toward the door.
...so we're not going to poke them?
Look, when the resident mask whisperer says there's no point in talking to the masks...
Linnet stays inside an extra minute or two, scribbling rough sketches of the masks. You never know. They could come in handy.
Outside, Bast looks at Yves inquisitively. "Any idea which ones these were?"
Yves shakes his head, once he's back in color and sound. "Those aren't Espers. Weren't? Aren't now, never were. I'm not sure what they were, though I think they were alive once, or something that those were part of was alive, but that's just... what's left over."
"So...Espers can die?" Orrey asks solemnly.
"Those aren't--they're something else. I don't know what. I'm not a, a cryptobiologist! Probably. I mean, I don't think I am, talking with Guardian Forces and making some mask terrariums doesn't really count. I think. Probably. Depends on how cryptobiologist is being defined." Yves clears his throat. "Anyway." Ivan/Bast "If these weren't Espers, jury's still out. Though I wonder about Alexander." Bast shades his eyes with a hand, looking for movement in the central building.
"If they're not Espers, could that have been something related to the masks anyway? Some sort of experiment?" Isa asks.
Linnet finally follows the rest of the party out. "Why would a university have a creepy color-draining storage shed just for three masks?"
"Study? Or some experiment gone wrong, maybe." Orrey says, eyeing the central building.
"Or the masks could be related to them," Yves says grimly. "I don't know. I need a timeline! I'm not a historian of--okay, maybe I need to expand my field of scientific research, I can't just keep denying areas of focus because I haven't done much in them yet. Remind me when we're done here to add about a dozen more journal subscriptions to the ship library."
"Probably for the same reason one of the buildings is a lonely glass thing now." Bast frowns, apparently not seeing what he was looking for.
"Funding ran out."
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