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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:54:41 GMT -6
With the slight weight of the dagger in her hand, the almost familiar design of it gripped tightening in her hand, her heart began to slow. She had to be less like a galabex being hunted by vulticus if this was to work. She stayed there, armored back pressed against the reassuring bulk of the desk as she tried to pull details of the things shape from memory. It was large, colors a purple and black that did not suit the design she had seen so far of the mansion, with spots of white that suggested holes. But beyond it looking like a ragged blanket that had attached itself to the ceiling as she watched, she could not find a weakness.
Cursing the pride and reasoning that had led her to taking the familiar dagger rather than the one of cursed flame, she realized she was going to have to expose herself to the thing to figure out how to fight it. And, as she was reminded of the many crafted dead things the labs had made, the armor was no longer nearly such a comforting weight. 47
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:54:54 GMT -6
She crawled to the side of the desk, keeping her eyes sweeping between the white ceiling above and her goal. The thing was making sounds now, great whumphs of air that had her hand tightening painfully around the hilt of the dagger, sounds lacking in any of the snorting or snarling she hoped a guardian of the mansion would make. The thought of it crawling across the ceiling, folding and unfolding itself as a thing that not even the labs had dared to create, made her want to scream a challenge and leave behind the only cover she had.
But there was a right way to do these things, and Haix instead poked her head out front he side of the desk to try to catch a glimpse of the thing. She did at the same moment it did, dropping from the ceiling to swoop at her without any sort of battle cry of its own. 48
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:55:14 GMT -6
So she filled the silence instead, pushing her arms free of the ground to launch herself at it in a run.
The floof was terrified now. Its pack was filled with shrieking panic, a swarm of emotions it also felt the moment its back had struck the ceiling to keep it from the sky, when its wings crumpled against the walls so that it could not go around. Its panic had only grown when it realized it could not see its pack any longer, the white room empty of all life even as it felt the panic of its pack, and so it had battered itself against the ceiling like a moth to a bulb. Then it had seen her, a quick flash of green and brown from behind the shiny rocks. Without a single thought, it threw itself at its pack, hoping to find some safety there, remembering far too late as she screeched and charged that there had never been much safety there.
And then the pain, not felt at a distance like the emotions but real pain, blossomed in its wing as she clawed at it. All training and conditioning forgotten, it swam upwards, sending a greeting of joy mixed with its pain, trying to greet the pack, trying to calm her down. 49
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:55:29 GMT -6
The emotion crawled over her mind like ants on a corpse, and Haix flinched back as the thing launched itself into the ceiling. Blood, as red as hers, dripped down to splatter against the white tiles. But it was the feeling of wrongness, of some others emotion trying to burrow its way into her mind that made her look at the thing above her with more than just a readiness to fight to the death.
And, to her absolute surprise, she recognized the beast that bled and sent dual feelings of worry and joy at her like a vulticus on its back.
“Daub?”, she asked the thing, remembering the word she had called it. As the worry joy twisted into a weak jot of recognition, she snarled, “Daub!” The damned floof, the emotion twister. She had thought to let it go back at the kennels, to let it float away into the night to be eaten by some nocturnal hunter or to prey on some weak-minded soft-skin. There would not be any food for it had it stayed after she had left, the things that grumbled in the vents of the kennels too good at stripping the air. 50
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:55:42 GMT -6
But here it was, sagging as though the dagger had punctured it like a balloon, slowly coming to float a few feet above the ground as she glared at it. It sagged, head pointing down at the ground as it refused to match the black voids of its eyes to here, though if she had been kinder she might have attributed it to the bright lights rather than any shame it felt. She could feel that shame as it brought to her mind another thought, and she struck it again.
Its mouth gaped in a silent scream as the blow sent it to the ground, a new wound adding to the red that slid into the space between the tiles. She felt it cry out in pain, its panic and fear and pain marching across the front of her mind in a way that was not so easy to ignore.
She managed it rather well. 51
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:55:57 GMT -6
The ssashirk stood in front of the thrashing floof, staring at it with her head cocked to the side as though listening for something. After a few seconds, she knelt next to it, asking it a question in words it did not understand, the cold emotion lessening the burning pain that danced through it. The floof answered in its pain, in how it felt, in a question of its own as it asked why she had hurt it. The pack was supposed to be safe.
The two of them communicated in their own ways, neither understanding the other, and Haix brought her bloodied dagger down to the floofs back.
He hesitated, turning it one way, then the other, then with a sigh of resignation that the floof barely felt, she wiped the blood of the dagger back onto the floofs fur. When it was clean, and the floof no longer flailing nearly so much, she put the blade back and grabbed the floof like she would a cloak. 52
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:56:09 GMT -6
There were more words that the floof did not understand, but it felt her hate and disgust fade as they gave away to annoyance.
Haix brought the floof to the desk, surprised that it seemed to weigh less than even a hatchling sarane for all its size, and tore pages from the books as it dripped blood onto the desk. It tried to fight her as she pressed the pages to the wounds, little more than scratches as far as she could tell for all their bleeding, but she held the damned heart-twister in place until the blood stopped staining the pages. The ripped pages were left on the desk, a blood-stained offering that Haix muttered a few words over. The holiday was of these crafted creatures after all, and their dyed blood. But she could not stay so long as a true lab beast was on the grounds with her, especially not one of the heart-twisting floofs. 53
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:56:19 GMT -6
She would have to go back, lock it away in the kennels before returning to meet her fate. And she would pray, no, she knew she would be strong enough to return and escape whatever schemes the labs intended. She would not fall to them as the kair and the dash-claw had already done, not allow herself to fall back into that false sense of security that had let her think the city was safe for any but the soft-skins.
The floof hung in the air just above the table, sending to her a constant mewling appeal of a child, but she would not fall to her knees and beg it nor the mansion for anything. Or perhaps that was how it now felt after her blade had tasted it twice? The thought brought her a laugh, and she hooked her hands under its shoulder-like area to start dragging it through the air. 54
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:57:19 GMT -6
With the offering of blood and words to counteract any sacrilege she had committed by damaging the books, she hoped that the demon home would let them leave peacefully. Seeing as the door was where she had left it, the hope did not seem to be a false one.
Still, she muttered the words aloud as well as in her heart. “I will be here.” A simple phrase spoken in her own language, not so much a promise as a statement of fact. The floof would take some pastes and salves, be left in its cage for whatever would come for it, but she would be here.
The reached the door without incident, the massive hunk of metal sliding silently out of their path. The gardens awaited her and her charge. For a moment, she thought to find the plants that moved, to toss the whole beast to them in offering and returning back to the throat of the evil place immediately, but she did not want to strengthen its bond to the labs even further. She stepped off the porch onto the path, eyes locked on the gate. 55 [Daub: 12.3 / 25.1 Grab items and leave if there is no encounter. Character is two posts away from another level.]
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Post by Silver on Dec 8, 2020 1:30:18 GMT -6
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Post by Alma on May 31, 2021 19:21:00 GMT -6
It was the last day of the month, and the day of dreaming had long since passed them by. Alma was not one to pray to foreign gods, and the number of stories she had heard relating to the Binder and the dragons creation made her less than willing to believe in them. Especially when said god was little more than a chimera in some of the tales, some magical beasts fusing together somehow like a talkesh, though without the extra heads, then fighting some monsters and creating dragons.
And considering how many tales she had heard of dragons being slain for being absolute monsters, she was not too keen on accidentally stumbling across their so-called god at any point. The rumors alone at what happened to humans who were tricked into bonding with them were enough to make her stomach tie itself in knots. Her companion for the day had no such thoughts. [May 1]
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Post by Alma on May 31, 2021 19:21:15 GMT -6
The thing beside her, covered in head to toe to tail in crisp, white bandages, had been the original ‘dragon’ the labs had made. Yeah, she knew some folks would claim otherwise, citing a lack of fire-breathing or intelligence, but there were apparently a ton of ‘draconics’ that could no more breathe fire than she could, and it did not take too much in the smarts department for a beast to terrorize a countryside. She did find it a little funny how the ‘real’ dragons had tried to distance themselves from their destructive past with a name change, “‘Specially’cause they just swapped out a letter and added a few more. Draconic’s just dragon with a c for a g, and an ic at the end to steal the common word. Glad none of those flying lizards can wander intah here, right boy?“
The wiurn did not respond. [2]
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Post by Alma on May 31, 2021 19:21:38 GMT -6
Wiurn were not ones for chatting away like an izer, though Anonymous sometimes would rumble and grunt like an angry bwee whenever she took a larger beast past his cage. She still talked to him as she read off the latest warnings regarding the mansion’s current state. “Labs are so big, even their claimed god-beast ain’t getting in here. Looks like the mansion only changes internally this month.” She laughed at that, shaking her head. “Not even worth an outside change, the poor freak. Wonder why the owner even bothers, but eh, heard they’ve got some cool bits of loot in there to be collected. And no one’s gonna be bothering us about dragons versus draconics, and the talking sarane”, she stressed the last word, “ain’t gonna bother us even in there. Yer a bit bigger than a chunk of them, and the others cannae fit through the damned door.” [3]
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Post by Alma on May 31, 2021 19:21:50 GMT -6
With that cheerful thought in her mind, Alma looked beyond the gate to the mansion behind it. It was one of the few instances that the place looked like a normal building, devoid of spooky trees or pulsing fruit or enough flowers to send a fel rakai-sarane into a sneezing fit. “Should be a quick trip, so long as ah’m not locked into a closet for a day,” she told the wiurn, knocking her gloved fist against a wooden post. The mansion could be a pain like that once someone entered it’s building, though she had never known it to be more than a mild prankster when she stayed out on the lawn. She was no mage or scientist, and the only reason she had come at last to the mansion that month was to have a quick look around and see what dragon-treasures she might snatch for her collection. Nothing like grabbing a few exotic goods for free without ever even needing to leave the city. [4]
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Post by Alma on May 31, 2021 19:22:07 GMT -6
There would be some risk, of course. For the risks that had mouths full of razor sharp teeth and scales like iron, she had brought the wiurn. Yes, he looked like a burn victim swaddled in the seemingly infinite rolls of bandages she had wrapped around him, and she had no doubt any real dragon they might encounter would see no problem making sure that the reason he wore them would be fire-related injuries. No, she did not think anything that directly attacked them, so long as it was not the mansion itself, would be able to prevail against the wiurn. Especially not after they clawed and torn apart the bandages and found out the actual reason he wore them.
“Well, one of the reasons,” she said to the wiurn as he flapped his wings once, grunting as the bandages rippled across his wings. He dropped back into his bat-walk a moment later, twisting his head around to nip at the bandages. [5]
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