From afar, Blight-Render just cackles.
Siobhan looks apprehensive, but nods quietly at
Siobhan ...Sepdet's words.
Dylan crouches down, and sets his hands palm-flat against the rock floor of the tunnel and closes his eyes, letting his breathing slow and steady. After a moment, he straightens, and opens his eyes again. He nods to Sepdet. "Very well." He turns, every motion smooth, steady, utterly controlled, and moves down the tunnel toward the river and the heat.
Sepdet seems perfectly calm, though strained.Her own resolve is written in the set of her jaw, and the quiet, resigned tread as she follows after. She clasps Siobhan's and Paul's shoulders as she sets off on Dylan's heels.
You paged Paul and Siobhan with 'Faintest echo of Mother's touch...just enough for you to feel a cool gentleness spread out from her hands.'.
Paul follows at least far enough to watch, and perhaps be able to act, his movements stiff and overcontrolled.
Umbra: The Molten River(#3995RJ)
Your path comes to a sudden stop amid light and heat and agony. The tunnel you traverse is bisected by a wide river of molten silver, glowing with mixed light of argent and blood. In the twisting shadows across the way, you see the entrance to the far side's tunnel. But the river of death lies between, churned by the never ending wind.
Long distance to Dylan: Sepdet hates it when my character is sure of herself and I'm going NOOoooooooooo. :P We'll see.
Joseph's brow is knit again, eyes dark, though he nods distractedly to Sepdet's suggestions.
Dylan pages to Paul, Joseph, Sepdet, Siobhan, and Blight-Render: Dylan goes into light trance as the best way to consider drowning himself in silver. :)
Siobhan follows behind, resigned. Her worried look slips to one of intent concern as the group watches Dylan prepare.
Dylan simply walks to the edge of the river, lets his eyes settle on his reflection, and Reaches, without looking back.
Dylan's eyes narrow, and he lowers himself into a crouch at the side of the river. He looks up and down the river, scanning for something.
Paul's breathing turns to short, sharp breaths through his nose as he watches from a 'safe' distance.
Long distance to Eligio Sacateca: Sepdet is going to feel really stupid if we take the only path out, which is a river of silver, and BR pages us, 'ha ha, you're dead now. App for new characters.'
Dylan lowers his head, not finding what he was looking for, and just letting his breath carry him for a moment. Then he stands up and look back at his pack. "I am unable to reach through it. The current disrupts the reflection."
You paged Blight-Render with 'Fifty feet across, eh?'.
Blight-Render pages: At least. Distances are so strange in the umbra...
Paul says, "Can you make an eddy with something? That isn't your hand?"
Siobhan breaths out with relief, until that point unaware that she was holding her breath. "Go back now?"
Sepdet meets Dylan's gaze quietly, the red glow flickering weirdly off of her dark eyes. She walks over to the edge, facing the surface a thousand times greater than in her nightmare, with what almost seems to be grim fascination.
Dylan's eyes seek out the Strider Theurge. "Hope, you carry things. I never do. I could use your bowl But is that the point?"
Sepdet is braced like a bird poised to fly. ~I do not know. I want to try. But you are my pack.~ Silently she takes out the clay bowl, redstained at the bottom from recent blood offerings.
Paul walks forward, small, stiff steps. Staff tapping the ground in front of him uncertainly. Very very cautious. Untill he's standing at the river's edge, nearly ever muscle tensed.
Dylan looks steadily at Sepdet. "Let me?" he asks, waiting for an acceptance before he takes the bowl. "You know I will not try to protect you more than I can help, but I trust your Vision more than my own."
Sepdet swallows and sits still, letting him take the bowl form her.
Dylan takes the bowl and turns back to the river, kneeling down at the edge again. A moment. A breath. Then he reaches out to fill the bowl, trying to keep his finges clear of the river's bruning touch.
Silver begins to flow into the bowl; in the next moment, it shatters from the heat stress. Drops of molten silver splash Dylan's arm.
Dylan's lips skim back from his teeth and his breath hisses. He moves back for the edge of the river quickly. After a moment, he says softly, "I am sorry."
Siobhan cries out involuntarily as the bowl shatters, and quickly steps forward to her tribesmate. "I don't like this, at all." She looks around at her packmates with a tight smile. "Bad luck? Or signs?"
Paul reaches out his staff and dips the tip in. Keeping both hands on the sword scarred wood he probes for depth, then pulls the staff back out before it can shatter.
Paul says softly, "Physics, in the real world. A message maybe, here." He looks to where the winds stir the liquid, looking at his silvercoated staff. "Deep. Very very deep. Like a channel."
Sepdet growls under her breath, muttering not at Dylan. ~I'm sorry,~ she whispers, and it's obviously not to do with the bowl.
Pack> Sepdet looks apologetic. I keep deleting this pose over and over, even though I know it's what Sepdet would do. It's probably wrong and stupid, but this is what she's like.
Joseph starts to pace, muscles flexing in the growing heat.
Pack> Paul envisions you diving in. "Which will kill you, unless the Forge's laws are in effect here."
Sepdet takes a sudden step back, then two strides for speed, then leaps out.
You paged Blight-Render with 'Okay, you can kill me now. :('.
Paul shouts, "NO!"
Dylan's jaw tightens, and he looks down at his arm where the silver has touched it. He takes a corner of his jerkin and, movements tightly controlled, wipes at the drops of silver which are as liquid as when they first touched him. Then his head whips around, and his control breaks enough to allow a cry. "No---"
Siobhan peers over the river at the other side. "I wish I could fly over..." She muses thoughtfully, then gasps as the Strider leaps past her. She makes a grab for her...
Paul starts to involuntarily change, going rigid as he fights down the frenzy, eyes staring helplessly at the fastmoving Strider.
Siobhan's fist closes on air as Sepdet launches herself into the river. She hits the roiled surface with a mundane splash, followed by a choked-off scream.
Blight-Render pages: You're under the surface, with no bottom under your feet that you can sense. The pain is terrible, but after the first few seconds, you realize you're not going to die. Which at this point may have been preferable.
Siobhan teeters, unbalanced by the attempted grab, at the edge. Her eyes search desperately for her friend, as she fights to regain her balance.
Joseph's tensed muscles release almost the moment the Strider takes the step back, the Wendigo knowing her far too well, it seems. His own strangled cry is lost in Paul's as he breaks. Still, Sepdet is a Strider, and the Wendigo no match for her quickness. He leaps.
The Metis disappears underneath the surface.
You paged Eligio Sacateca with 'Everyone was standing at the river, debating what to do. I deleted my pose five or six times, then said 'oh fuck it' and jumped in. I _may_ have just died.'.
Dylan blurs and then solidifies again, fighting with the shapes. He reaches for breath and finds it, steadying, but takes no comfort from that triumph. "Too cautious," he whispers, and then he leaps as well.
From afar, Joseph shakes her head, and then shakes you. :)
Paul whimpers, body straining against his control, as one after another, his packmates vanish.
You paged Eligio Sacateca with 'And of course,they will go in after me. agh.'.
Eligio Sacateca pages: Oh dear Gaia, I really hope you *are* in Erebus. The river doesn't kill you there.
From afar, to Paul, Joseph, Sepdet, Siobhan, and Blight-Render, Dylan sets his @doing, a little hysterically.
In turn, Joseph and Dylan dive into the river. They, too, disappear.
Teeth bared, Paul stares helplessly at the flowing silver, a scream of rage, or some other emotion, locked in his throat.
Siobhan draws back from the edge, fighting her own hysteria. Then shoots Paul a bewildered, forlorn, glance. "Our family. We have to go too." She steps forward and arcs into a dive.
Blight-Render pages to Joseph, Sepdet, and Dylan: As the pain works its way into your body, your mind confronts something horrible from your past, or present, some personal failing or guilt or sin that you've denied, or avoided, or whatever. It doesn't resolve it, merely confronts it, like a hideous psychic jack-in-the-box popping up.
You paged Blight-Render with 'That would be the fact that I've betrayed Anubis, yep. Paul closes his eyes and whispers, "Live together, die together?"
Blight-Render pages: Through the haze of pain and bitter memory, you realize enough to feel the direction of the current, and can use it to orient.
The Stargazer plunges into the fiery river, leaving Paul alone. The only answer to his question is the unceasing wind.
Paul snorts, takes a deep breath and leaps as if he can actually make the far side, staff held like a spear. He whispers, "See you on the other side," to whatever is listening, just before hitting the superheated surface.
Long distance to Blight-Render: Sepdet will be dragged. There's another problem. Sepdet's normally afraid of deep water.
You paged Blight-Render with 'But I think she's gone off the deep end now, and may be past all hysteria. Gaaaaah.'.
Blight-Render pages: Recall that there was an opening directly across from where you guys did your diving.
Long distance to Blight-Render: Sepdet is in total catatonia. She saw the road, and jumped for it (without her player's wish, either ;) Keep going. Don't think. Doon't breathe. I'm sorry, anubis, but I choose my own path...I'm sorry...there's the rooad.
Blight-Render pages: So you're just letting the river carry you?
Dylan's body arches, deep beneath the surface, and unseen, inaudible, his lips form the name, 'Gryphon.' Desperately, he tries to pull himself toward the opposite side..
Paul contorts a little in agony, the dogtags at his throat flapping out behind him amidst the liquid torment. Eschewing sense, he strokes downwards, ever downwards, deeper into purgatory. Then working his way across to the far side.
Long distance to Paul, Joseph, Siobhan, Dylan, and Blight-Render: Sepdet SWEARS. Back now. The moment I posed jumping, Angela called, which has totally broken my train of thought. I was typing while on the phone, BR>
Eligio Sacateca pages: PleaseDon'tDie. PleaseDon'tDie. PleaseDon'tDie.
Long distance to Paul, Joseph, Siobhan, Dylan, and Blight-Render: Sepdet kicks the world again. (And the phone just rang AGAIN, with someone else calling me. I just got rid of them. I don't believe this.)
Normally, Sepdet would be flailing, drowning, and panicking right now. But then, normally, she would never risk any body of liquid deeper than her shoulders. Her seared body keeps in a clumsy effort towards the direction she first leapt, body and mind disconnected from reality and turned inwards on an inner dilemma for which she has bled and burned before.
Siobhan's hands clench into fists, her body naturally streamlining itself with the current with the grace of a practiced swimmer. For a moment, she is paralyzed in absolute terror, then begins to cut across the current diagonally, trying to get away, get out of this torment.
Joseph's arms move with a determined speed, desperately trying to keep moving toward the other shore, his only thought that the torment may end if he gets there. It may.
One by one the packmates hit the far wall, isolated in their own private hells, a solid rock face under their blindly questing hands.
Paul, at the juncture of wall and bottom of the channel, starts making his frantic way up the wall, feeling along it with his hands, seeking escape.
Joseph
Joseph's hands grapple at the wall, pulling up only to slide back down. Panic starts to edge into the frmaework of his mind as the escape he'd pushed for seems to slip from his grasp.
Siobhan tests the wall, growing frantic also. She then gives up and strikes off upstream, swimming against the current, occasionally reaching out to feel for the wall to the side.
Dylan pulls himself down and down into trance, trying to let the panic slip away, washed away in the flow of pain. He runs his hands over the wall, then begins trying to work his way upstream, feeling for openings or handholds that will pull him away from the agony he entered so freely, of his own will.
Paul surfaces, not far from downstream from the exit tunnel. One by one the others come to the surface: Sepdet, Joseph, Dylan, WayFinder. Whatever awareness you might have of each other has long since been burnt away by private terrors.
Sepdet's numb movements become mechanical and stiff as the pain continues to burn until surely she will soon have no nerves left to sear. She fights doggedly against the current, pressing back in as near a direction as she can to the open door calling some part of her mind since she first set foot at the edge of the river. But she is no swimmer, and the current may soon win.
Paul scrambles out of the river, a constant whine of pain escaping his lips. His scurrying heads directly away from the river, conscious volition lost somewhere in the molten metal, staff clenched in a deathgrip in one hand.
Dylan bumps into his packmates as he moves toward the opening. Grey eyes lack recognition, trance far too deep to allow for memory. He moves to the opening and pulls himself out, slow, steady, methodical, inhuman. Then he stands still, as though he has had no thought beyond that emergence.
Joseph gives voice to his pain as he breaks the surface, arms flailing as he continues to push forward, searching for the way out with nothing more thna blind determination.
Siobhan swims desperately, feeling her way upsteam to the exit, eyes blinded by some vision she rather wished not to see again. She starts an intermittent low humming, tuneless, and filled with her growing hysteria.
Paul finally hits the wall and collapses panting, finally letting his staff go when it interferes with him curling up into a ball of pain and recollection.
Dylan pages: Okay, and Carey loves you and says you are to get sleep.
Long distance to Dylan: Sepdet smiles. Will do. I'll need it, after this evening .Gaaaah. My stomach went out my feet when ihit return.
From afar, Dylan hugs. I know.
From afar, to Paul, Joseph, Sepdet, Siobhan, and Dylan, Blight-Render waits for everyone to make it ashore...
Sepdet finally rolls over onto the bank in a dripping, burning heap and goes limp.
Pack> Dylan says "Phew. I was all set to have to *go*in*again* after Sepdet. :)"
Joseph's hand finally hits and catches, pulling himself bodily out of the torment to fall on his back.
Siobhan scrabbles her way onto shore, probably clambering right over one of her packmates to do so. She crawls as far away from everyone and the river as she can get, then coils into a tight ball. Still humming her monotonous tune...
The absence of pain is finer than any pleasure you can remember at the moment, almost orgasmic, shrouded only by the mind's grip on what the body would forget. The wind blows off the silvery river, but irrationally the air feels cooler and more forgiving than it did on the far bank. A steep tunnel rises precipitously upwards from the small bank.
Dylan reaches out, dreamlike, toward the wind. Then he shudders once, and the distance slips away from him. For a moment, all the horror and all the pain is caught in his face, and he stoops forward, catching himself against the wall. Then he straightens and looks around. "Are we..." he says hoarsely, then has to stop and try again. "Are we...here?"
Joseph remains laying prone, teeth gritted and eyes closed.
Sepdet uncurls slightly at the voice, but does not respond for several hoarse breaths. Finally she unfolds herself with a shudder, and stares back at the Stargazer, with the dumbfoundedness of one waking up to find a stranger in the room. ~Where....?~ She looks around, eyes shying off the river's surface, and back to the pack,recent events slowly reemerging from her numbed brain.
Paul stays curled into a tight ball, slowly, so slowly, catching his wind. At least he's not whining any more.
Siobhan stays coiled, rocking slightly in place. She falls silent.
Dylan stands still a moment longer, then he walks over to Sepdet and touches her very lightly, then moves to touch Paul, then Joseph, then Siobhan. It is not clear if it is a call, a comfort, or simply a way of reassuring himself that they are real. Then he turns and looks back at the river. "Gryphon," he says softly, and closes his eyes.
Sepdet looks at the others with faint remorse. She pulls herself up to her feet, leaning against the wall. Brokenly, she begins to sing under her breath, almost inaudibly at first and then firming to the lullabye she uses for healing and for meditation.
As you pull yourselves together, the wind begins to work on your abraded nerves like a soothing balm, carrying warm moisture from the river, yet without the blistering pain.
Dylan opens his eyes, and then moves back to Sepdet's side, one hand going to rest on her shoulder as he looks at the others, exhausted and worn, deep lines etched into his too-old face.
Paul slowly starts to uncurl, his hands flattening out against the stone, his deep breathing serving to slowly calm himself more.
Siobhan uncoils in a sudden, violent movement, coming to her knees and retching noisily. When finished, she slumps against the ground, looking miserable, but calmer.
Joseph opens his eyes, that in itself seeming to him a monumental feat. He stares blankly, simply breathing as he listens to Sepdet. Finally calm, he sits up, pulling his knees under him.
Sepdet finally breaks from the wall's support and slips over to Joseph, lacing her fingers over his shoulder in a tight grip. She looks across at Siobhan, letting the last verse drift away. ~I'm sorry,~ she repeats, in exactly the same tone as before. ~The air outside is gentle. We can go there now.~
Dylan moves to kneel between Paul and Siobhan, trying to touch both at the same time. He looks at Sepdet amd say simply, "Thank you."
Paul sits up slowly, looking at his unsilvered clothes with the hint of a grin.
Paul says hoarsely, "Remind me that drycleaning is easier?"
Siobhan shakily gets to her feet, with a wan smile. "Let's go..." With that, she shifts back down.
Siobhan contorts and blurs as she is transformed.
Joseph lifts his head slowly, and with grim determination gets to his feet. His motions are calculated,a s if afraid any action might bring the remembered pain.
Siobhan shifts into Lupus form.
The way is steep, but in surprisingly little time you find the tunnel lightening with the moon's rays. Soon enough, you find yourselves looking out on the surface of the mountain.
Dylan turns his face into the wind, and smiles as he moves forward, keeping the form he was born to for the time being.
From afar, to Paul, Joseph, Sepdet, Wayfinder, and Dylan, Blight-Render changes the desc.
Joseph gives the river a last look before shifting down to follow.
Joseph contorts and blurs as he is transformed.
Joseph pauses, his body losing its continuity and twisting into Lupus form.
Sepdet's hand slips down to Joseph's wrist. Words left behind, the Strider walks, faintly subdued, at the back of the small pack, her step quickening to something of its old measure as the wind catches and draws our steps.
Paul looks back at the river as if contemplating some thought, then shakes his head with something similar to good humor and follows his packmates out.
Dylan emerges into the wind and light behind WayFinder, and tips his head back, letting the wind catch and play with his long hair, and holds his hands out to the open space as if in greeting. Then he turns toward the peak.
l
Umbra: The Other Side of the Mountain(#3995RJ)
The upward thrusting tunnel emerges amid verdant splendor, evergreen brush and myriad grasses and wildflowers. The air is cool and crisp, and its purity slices through you with every breath. A hunter's eye can mark the signs of small animals, though none show themselves save wheeling birds. A lush land lies below, bursting with the new energies of spring. Above, a trail wends its way towards the peak, which is much closer than when you entered the tunnels. Scudding clouds often occlude the heights from view; the vapors seem close enough to touch.
Wayfinder breaths deeply of the air, as if by inhaling its goodness it will wipe the remnants of...before.
As you make your way to the surface, a moon bridge blossoms into existence a few feet below the exit, and concepts come to you...
Five. Five. Five.
And the fourth awaits.
Paul takes a deep breath, and hesitates only a moment before striding to the bridge.
Wayfinder bounds after Paul, obviously as anxious as he is to get home.
Sepdet looks around the open mountain's face, taking a long grateful glance at the world of sky and rock before following the others home.