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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:48:04 GMT -6
As she walked through the gardens, her hand slowly found its way to the dagger once more as she got a better look at the plants, sparing little more than a glance to those she recognized. Then her walk slowed, and she began to ignore those that were completely unfamiliar in favor of those she should have known. But the plants were wrong. There were little things that she only noticed as she looked at them with a great deal more care, pulling free her dagger to look at the underside of leaves and shove stems aside. A coating of white hairs covered the stem of one of the plants that should have been a bare green, the hair stiffening and breaking like needles as the dagger blade touched them. Another plant bore fruit that she knew well, only to see it begin to quiver as she drew near as if something grew inside of it.
The floof felt the emotions of something that was not her as it watched. 17
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:48:15 GMT -6
It wanted to warn her of the danger it knew lurked there, the anticipation of the thing far outweighing the thin thread of curiosity that it caught sailing through the breeze from her. But there was no need to warn her, the lizard stepping back with a caution that snapped the curiosity. It watched as she returned back to an earlier part of the path, taking a new route that lacked the strange fruit, the feelings of the plant fading away into nothingness as the fruit stilled.
Resisting the urge to start here, surrounded with plants that were wrong, was far more difficult than she thought. Each plant had something wrong with it, something that clashed with carefully stored details born of years of experimentation and research. There was a tree that produced bloated sweet fruit, its leaves and trunk a perfect match with the one in her memory. The flowers too were the right shape, the right color, but they yawned open wider than her head, looking as if giant starfish had taken to nesting in the trees. 18
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:48:25 GMT -6
There was a small patch of the plants that carried a ball of tar inside their seed pods, perfect for making into the powders and potions that kept her more violent beasts pliable, but the stems had swapped their colors with the buds, each an eye-blindingly bright orange that cradled a dull green bulb. What would she find if she took them out with her, if she cut them open? Would the tar make placid beasts insane with rage and energy, the effects reflecting the opposite nature of the plant? She was almost tempted to find out, to cut them open and stain her fingers with whatever hid within, to lose her mind to a mindless rage that would block out all thought.
The floof curled over itself.
No. She cleaned the dagger the best she could, then slid it home. Had she been willing to do that now, she might as well have dosed herself with known stimulants before ever reaching the hell house. 19
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:48:37 GMT -6
She moved through the carefully manicured garden with care, the eyes of the floof never leaving her little dull form as it moved between rows of brightly colored plants. Now that she had been shaken from any familiarity she had dared to allow herself to feel, she began to notice other things. Some of the plants moved despite the lack of the breeze, stems quivering or vines and roots pulling themselves behind bunches of stationary plants. The bunches themselves were always different, each identical to the others that shared the planter but never found in any others.
And the cold was there. Not the cold of snows and the dying season, for it was warmed past the gate than it had been outside of it. It was just cold enough to be noticeable, to remind her that she was not welcome to wander the rows of plants for as long as she wished. 20
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:48:47 GMT -6
Perhaps the house knew, and was trying to politely usher her off of its property until it could take on a new form, one that would draw her further into some madness that it designed. Or maybe it remembered her catching the beast that had hunted the pocket pets, and decided to try to protect her from some threat it would not recall.
The floof did not know either. It felt something beyond her and itself, something beyond the hunger that came in flashes when the lizard drew too close to one plant or another. What it felt it could not describe beyond the feeling of acknowledgement, that something had seen them. The feeling made it feel like it was pinned to the earth, beasts closing in, and so the floof dared to drift closer to the lizard, to bask in her simpler emotions. It was safer here, with its pack, than it would have been sailing away into the calling void above it. 21
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:48:59 GMT -6
There were other warnings to be found. Despite all of the blooms and greenery, there was not a single fluttering insect to be seen landing upon the bright petals, nothing to chew and mar the perfect leaves of the plants. What movement she saw in the planters seemed to be only that of the false plants, not a single worm to be seen tilling the earth nor an earwig crawling over the damp soil. Apparently the labs had no interest in insects, or at least the mansion had none to replicate and seed into the unnatural garden. Without any buzzing or chewing or even so much as a breeze to stir them, the plants remained as perfect as any glossy image in a book.
The floof, had it a mind to think of it and Haix the wit to ask, might have told her what else was missing as it hung in the air with it’s gaping mouth. There was nothing to eat. No mold, no spores that always seemed to find their way into even the best kept gardens. 22
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:49:09 GMT -6
The garden of the mansion was perfect, every plant changed to be better than the original, and no disease or rot could take place there. Had she noticed that alongside the lack of insects, even her will might have broke, sent her scurrying not just past the gates of the mansion but to the world beyond the soft-skin hive. But she lacked the wit of knowledge to know such things beyond a creeping feeling of wrongness, and that was shoved to the side to be ignored as if it was nothing more than a mere irritant. She did not even know of the floof that floated silently near her after all, near enough that she might have been able to pick it out of the night sky, a cluster of stars that had no right to look so clear in a largely blank sky.
So she continued closer to her goal, doubling back when the plants were far too strange for her to feign the belief that they were only plants and nothing more. 23
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:49:19 GMT -6
The door was the sight that kept her going, renewing her will as she moved along the maze of planters, leading her to wander deeper down paths as to avoid reaching it too soon. It was the symbol of her goal, a sight caught frequently between patches of thick vegetation. The floof could sense the flashes of anticipation as the dull armored lizard scurried down a path that led her closer to the door, the sudden sickness that curdled its stomach as Haix repeatedly chose the less direct path to her goal. They circled the mansion more than once due to that, a flare up of the illness making it curl itself into a bundle in sympathy when Haix darted away from the steps to wander some other path.
They returned to the steps much later, her eyes passing over and through its form several times as she suddenly changed directions. 24
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:49:31 GMT -6
It had worried then. She was of its pack, but it remembered the punishments she had inflicted upon it when it reached out to her mind. It had taken far too long for it to stop bleeding panic before it realized why it was trapped, and a decent amount of pain before it retreated into itself to stop speaking to the others. It knew there were others, had sensed floofs even that night as it had trailed her, but it did not dare speak. To speak would be to fall once more. It only dared to listen.
That worry was similar to that which it felt seeping from her in waves, tiredness and anger and many others fighting to kill the fear that danced through her. It watched, unable to prevent itself from floating ever nearer, torn between offering her some comfort or remaining away from her claws and teeth and any hidden nets. 25
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:49:43 GMT -6
The door was new. It was not the wooden doors she had grown used to seeing adorning the front of the hellplace, lacking even the simplest pattern carved into its surface. Instead it almost seemed to glow under the light protruding above it, the wall it stood with as plain and featureless as any to be found in the kennel hallways. The walls themselves showed no sign of the wooden slats of the other visits, rotting or in good repair, the stairs and floor leading up to it the same almost-rock that make up that of the kennels too.
She had never been within the main property of the labs, limiting herself to slinking around the small protrusion of it that gave out the free beasts that had called so many to it. It had been like the kennels as well, larger on the inside than it had any right to be, the area spotless and the air oddly empty of scent for an area filled with beasts.
The floof floated closer. 26
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:49:55 GMT -6
There were three emotions. The first, the one being merciless dragged down to die, the second circling it, tearing at it as it bleated and thrashed. Anger cared little for it and was the most vigorous of the three, the lizard taking a step forward while the floof hovered silently behind her, close enough now to be touched if she drew one hand back. The third emotion, the one it had followed there remained steady beneath the torrent of hate and fear, shaking off disgust and all of the other emotions that sought to drown it as the anger did to fear. The floof made sense of them, matching them to its own emotions, to its own experiences as if the emotions were creatures of their own rather than just pieces of the lizard.
Haix moved closed to the door, her bare feet slapping against the concrete beneath them. She did not see any handle to pull, just a solid wall of polished steel and the blurred reflection of the night behind her. 27
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:50:10 GMT -6
The floof felt other emotions reach out, attempting to claim the place of the calm and weariness. Relief and hope floated along it, threatening to pull it free, washing away seconds later as the calm remained as steady as a creature bound by a net. The lizard took several steps forward as the hope swirled and grew.
The door slid open. The hope died.
Anger held the panic close as the lizard continued walking. There was no pause here, not when she had spent them all in the garden as she reconsidered what she was doing time and time again. The first had been spent long before she had set foot into the cursed property, a twinge as she had tried to release the floof. Then again as she had set the words to the paper, leaving it for someone else to find and celebrate. It was not very often that soft-skin fell into such riches so easily as that after all. 28
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:50:28 GMT -6
The floof felt other emotions flare, watched her draw the dagger from its sheath before taking another step towards the door. Gone was the almost casual walk, the lizard slinking closer to the door as if she expected something terrible to burst through it, waves of joy and confidence swelling as she reached the opening. Then the emotions sunk away as she straightened up, but the dagger remained held in hand.
What had she expected of the demon house after having been to it several times before, having seen that the inside often took after its facade? A mighty beast, perhaps what was called a sarane by the foolish soft-skins who did not understand what the word meant, busting out to meet her from some broken cage? Her own beasts, half formed and without a hint of the loyalty or obedience she had worked so hard to cultivate, ready to give her a true final battle? 29
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:50:42 GMT -6
No, the mansion had never been so direct as that. It was a thing of soft-skins, a thing that hid the danger it posed beneath the harmless exterior of a blind grub. It would attack later, striking when she least expected it. And she certainly would deserve the best it could give, her armor more than enough to turn the scrabbling claws of the physical creatures she had encountered, the dagger small but sharp enough to pierce even a thick hide. The thing it sent would be some great beast, one only sent against the most dangerous of the treasure hunters that crawled through the building like termites.
Though the floof could not hear the thoughts spinning in her head, it felt her joy, the sense of some great anticipation. It wondered what was so exciting, floating to one side to try to make out what she saw in the doorway to cause such a feeling. 30
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:50:54 GMT -6
The doorway beckoned, and the floof felt some surprise of its own that the lizard did not immediately rush inside after whatever had brought her such joy. The glare of white that it could make out dazzled its light sensitive eyes, and it blinked repeatedly as if the darkness it saw when its eyes were shut would linger only if it blinked fast enough.
Her eyes adjusted much quicker, the lights in the surrounding area having burned away her night vision before she had even taken her first true step towards the door. Her initial thought was that it was one of the waiting rooms at the beast-thing dispersal location, the same blank tiled floors and too bright lights, everything a pure, blinding white. The air itself seemed tainted by it, void of any scent beyond something that brought to mind someone physically scrubbing it after having done the walls. Everything was clean. 31
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