Seaside 5: Kinda like One Piece without the anime

[Recaiden]

It does look pretty awful, doesn't it?
It's pretty fortunate that Benedict can leave immediately, so now the paladin can do other things other than what he was hired for last night.

"I remember there being some gold-plated spiral things, too," Zophiel says, reminding her. Not that it would help: it seems like Anchor was going to get them anyway. "So make sure you check that antique shop and the other places like that."

The paladin helps gather spiraled objects to gather together or get rid of or whatever.

Luckily, since it's still morning, they have practically all day to clean out the town and get rid of the remaining spiral influence. Zophiel even has time to take a break and re-ink the magical seal onto his back! And to let it dry, too. That's an important step.

Once they're all done, it's likely late afternoon again. It wasn't that big of a town, after all.

"So..." Zophiel says when they get back together. "You know which way it is to the next town?"

Spiral-objects gathered up and smashed: check.
Bits of gold and other valuables from the village vanished in a sacrificial fire: check
Town empty of fish-monsters: check.

"Yeah, it's just-" Anchor goes to get a map from her pocket, only to find that it's been soaked by seawater and turned to mush. "I mean, uh, no." The ruined map drops to the ground.
"But we came from that way, and there wasn't a town, so it must be up the coast that way!"

[bc56]

"Uh, what?" All of that is just confusing for Selekhael. The one thing she understood was that she should focus on entropy and try to give the bad feeling to Arukael. She can do that, right? That made relatively more sense. It seems kinda mean to give someone that feeling though. But he did ask for it.

[Purple Eagle]

[Workout Beach]

Beth rows and listens intently. She suppresses the urge to ask how Karasu & Bro got involved with something called the Ninja Police.

"An adventure?" she echoes when the subject changes back to herself. "Well, shadowrunning is mostly just stealing stuff, but I guess there were a couple of interesting jobs... I guess the most interesting was for this big binding focus that the human government was working on-"

A rumbling in the sky. Stormclouds roll in over the beach, seemingly from nowhere, and start drizzling rain on the rowers. Shouts from the volleyball team on the shore indignantly ask what gives?

Karasu has been keeping an eye on that buoy, and it has started shaking. A small dish antenna twitches. A spiral of arcing lighting covers its red and white frame. Then, suddenly, it dives underwater.

Just as suddenly, it pops up next to the rowboat, creating a wave that pushes it away and threatens to capsize it! Beth almost jumps back up to fighting position, but the rocking boat messes with her footing and she thumps back down in her seat. "Er... evasive maneuvers!"

The machine-monster-buoy-thing sparks and lights up as it charges some big lighting attack. Beth sits down and gets ready to put in a series of oar-straining strokes to hopefully evade it.

[Workout Beach]

Karasu listens like she's about to hear the coolest thing in the world, at least until it's starts drizzling all of a sudden. "Ugh, really?" She asks with deadpan annoyance as she gets wetter than she planned for.

Soon though, she has bigger problems than wet clothes. The holographic screen she's opened up to scan her inventory for an umbrella closes in favour of grabbing her oar for evasive manouvers. "Let's go, Beth!" She begins rowing for all she's worth, though she's ready to spring to action at a moment's notice if necessary. Say, if they don't manage to get out of the monster's trajectory.

[Rebonack]

[Marlick Aftermath]

Arukhael staggers as the burden of paradox gets dumped onto him. At the same time that uncomfortable winding feeling vanishes from Selekhael.

"Oof... okay. Let me see if I can't fix this for you," he says before flickering again-

Wow what a pretty day!

Sekhmet is out for a walk, right? Walking out in the open like this is a treat, isn't it? She never could have done this back at home. Should she stroll down toward the beach? It sure looks pretty.

But as she crests a sandy hill covered in dune grass she'll discover a little lamb standing right beyond the top! He's a really cute little thing, all white and black and woolly! Something about the patterns in his wool are funny. They just seem to keep going forever.

"MAAA!" says the lamb standing between Sekhmet and the trail that leads down the the beach. Maybe he's lost? There aren't any other sheep around. At least none that Sekhmet can see.

What should she do?


[Pyramid? on a _____ island]

"Maybe?" Magdalene replies with a shrug. "I'm thinking no. This place is pretty (flo-) eer... fudged up. Sorry. The side halls probably just go to other places the thing is at. If we want to get to the bottom of it-"

She points at the stairs.

"-we're going to need to get to the bottom of it."

And then?

She's going to begin descending. Also keeping an eye out for any gross gorilla guys.

[5a Violista]

That's why you need to invest in magic waterproof maps.

"My map's probably in the same state," Zophiel says. Not to mention, it's hopelessly out-of-date.

So.
Thinking about it.
"Along the coast is the most likely place to find a town. Or a large river, and the town is up the river." Congrats, Anchor, for thinking of that first. "Well, then." The paladin looks around the town one last time, just in case there was something incredibly obvious that they were missing.
He can't see anything. "Let's go?"

Zophiel leaves the town so that they can travel along the coast. Northward, I believe - if I remember correctly, they got to Marlick Bay by heading northward, too.

[bc56]

"Uh..." This doesn't look like the sort of place where sheep live. So what's one doing here? Sekhmet carefully approaches the animal. She's never seen a sheep outside of picture books before. It's so fuzzy. If the sheep is willing, she tries to gently touch it. Hopefully it doesn't run away from her. She'd really like to pet it. It looks so cute and sweet.

[Vahnavoi]

[Pyramid on a volcanic island]

Leah better hurry up if she doesn't want to lose sight of Magdalene.

The stairwell is deep... very deep. It's almost as if the pyramid heard Magdalene's words and is now taking them towards the literal bottom of its structure. It doesn't take long before she can tell that, by number of steps taken, they're well past the room where those pale creatures dwelled, but no stops, no branches, no new openings show up to break up the monotony of her descent.

There's just stairs, going down, down, down, as if they're being created before her as she walks, the blue ectoplasm flowing inside the walls and tracing their outlines.

After a long descend, she finally arrives in what's, at a glance, an upside down version of the room they were in before. Four pillars hold up the ceiling and amidst them, there is a circular hole leading to a room above. There are side tunnels to left and right and, straight ahead, an exit tunnel and a window to the outside world through which stretch of pale grey sky can be seen. This makes as little sense as it sounds - Magdalene ought to be between 200 and 300 meters below the ground by now.

[Reinholdt]

[Pyramid on a volcanic island]

"Ehhh... You're probably right," Leah admits, eying Magdalene closely as she toes the lines of decorum.

Before hurrying after her down the stairs. And down. And down...

Until they reach... The second floor? The floor one floor down but with a lot of space in between and also not that much in between.

"Well... Best I can figure, this place is a portal hub from some alien species and we're literally wasting time at a train station." Leah can't imagine any other purpose this place might hold.

[Rebonack]

[Marlick Bay Aftermath]

Ho ho ho, are you approaching me?

"MAAA!" says the lamb again. He doesn't flee when Sekhmet comes near. Just looks up at her with his cute little blue lamb eyes.

She reaches out.

Closer.

Closer.

Aaaaaaalmost...

She has touched the lamb.

He is so fluffy and soft. Should she begin petting him he'll "MAAA!" again and wag his adorable little lamb-tail.

Oh god he's so cute.

Off in the distance, toward the beach where Sekhmet was planning to walk, dark angry looking storm clouds begin gathering. It's almost shocking how quickly they just materialize out of a clear blue sky.


[Alien Train Station on a Volcanic Island]

"Yeah I'm starting to think that, too," Magdalene admits.

At least there haven't been any more weird pictures of them stripping naked. Like hell Magdalene would do that in front of anyone. Not with the Hart beating in her chest, she doesn't like people seeing that. Raises way too many questions.

"Maybe those pictures were just there to mess with us," Magdalene muses. "Like to psych us out or something? And then you see the creepy faceless guys and you're like NOPE! outta here. That's probably what most normies would do."

Most normies wouldn't come in here in the first place. Only idiot adventurers would walk into an alien pyramid on a volcanic island. Anyone else would jump into their boat and get the hack away.

After a few seconds of thought Magdalene faces toward the exit.

"Okay here's what I'm thinking. The inside of this place is all twisted up so I don't know if I can riftgate out of here. But I SHOULD be able to open one outside," she says. "So I'm going to give it a shot in here first. And if it doesn't work I try again outside. That way we know if we can bail or not."

Then?

She reaches inward and attempts to create a pinprick skimming the outermost surface of Silvanus. Will the pyramid react to contact with the realm/sleeping body of a god?

[bc56]

Awww. It's so cute. Of course Sekhmet pets the lamb. It seems happy to let her. She'll do it for a while, muttering the silly nonsense people normally say to animals while they pet them. "Who's a good sheepy? So soft and warm. Good sheepy. Good sheep." In the distance, she sees the storm clouds. Guess she should end her walk early, before they move this way.

[Rebonack]

[Marlick Aftermath]

After petting the lamb for a while and noticing the storm clouds something odd might occur to Sekhmet.

She'll feel kind of sore, first of all. As if she had been kneeling there petting the lamb for a long time. That isn't the only thing, though. The sun is much lower on the horizon than it was before. Both of these points together would suggest that much more time has passed than it felt like.

Not seconds.

Hours.

The lamb is looking up at her now, watching.

Suddenly his gaze feels unsettling.

Maybe... maybe it would be a good idea to go home. Especially since it feels like it might start raining at any moment.

[bc56]

Sekhmet stands up, rubbing her sore backside. How long was she there? She must have zoned out. She runs back towards where she stowed her shoes. "Bye sheepy! I hope you find your family!"

[Vahnavoi]

[Pyramid on a volcanic island]

Magdalene can almost immediately tell something's wrong. First, there is unusual amount of resistance. Second, there is a growing compulsion to simply stop trying. It seems she's triggered some kind of a defense mechanism.

If she keeps trying, she and Leah can feel the room turning around them. Whether the floor is actually changing its slope or the gravity is being altered again, the effect is the same: the pyramid is goading them towards the exit. If Magdalene neither stops nor takes the hint, the room will eventually turn a full 90 degrees, trying to make her and Leah fall directly through the exit tunnel.

It seems that, while the pyramid is not opposed to them leaving, it is bent on them leaving on its terms. Two new series of blue glyphs appear on opposing walls near the exit: one is just a repeating motif of Magdalene pounding inside walls of the pyramid, unable go get out. The other has alternating motif of Magdalene pounding the walls, then Leah arriving and opening the pyramid from the outside, and finally Leah and Magdalane walking away from the pyramid, towards an elliptic shape that might represent a rift gate.

[Rebonack]

[Marlick Aftermath]

'Sheepy' watches Sekhmet run off.

He can feel the winding feeling slack, then vanish completely.

BAM!

Easy. Paradox dissipated.

Once he's sure that Sekhmet isn't watching him anymore the little lamb vanishes.

-only to reappear the barest fraction of a second after he disappeared at the beach.

As before, it'll be obvious to Selekhael that he just made a jaunt through time. Obviously he's been at this stuff a little longer than she has.

"Okay, done. Mortal-you is still free to do all the stuff that she was supposed to do and now the universe isn't going to slap you for wrinkling things up," Arukhael reports. He smiles a bit, pretty pleased with himself. But that expression gradually fades. "So... all this stuff must have happened to you just a little while ago, right?"

He sits down in the sand and wiggles his toes a bit.

"Did you want to talk about it? I've only been Correct for about a year so I might not have all the answers."

[bc56]

Selekhael just stares at the cherub. "Uh, everything?" She finally asks. She's really not sure of anything that happened after she picked up that artifact of entropy back in the manor house. She finds a seat as well. She expects this to be a long explanation.

[Reinholdt]

[Pyramid on a volcanic island]

"I don't really think that's a good idea. Have you ever heard of the parable of the Portable Hole and the Bag of Holding?" It's all about the dangers of opening dimensional rifts within dimensional rifts. The recursion is terrible for puny mortals.

Magdalene doesn't seem to be one for hesitation however, and soon Leah finds herself wrapping her arms around a pillar as the floor starts to shift.

"I-I don't think this place likes that."

At least they didn't instantly implode into a black hole.

[Hattish Thing]

[Forgotten coast]

The old man narrows his aging eyes. "Then you are a fool."

Was this mad mainlander really telling the truth? Did he mean to pursue the master below?

"You are not permitted," explains the old man. "He will not be pleased - and his is the temper of all the gods above. The old man makes a small gesture before him before glancing up towards the heavens. "I cannot stop you, but you must know that you walk the path of insanity."

He shakes his head. "Please, reconsider!

[Vahnavoi]

[Forgotten Coast]

The swordsman snorts. "Insanity? I think it would be insanity to leave such remarkable claim without a test. As the saying goes: if you meet an old master on the road, kill them."

And with those words, he jumps on the rocky slope. If the rocks can hold his weight, he'll race down to the bottom of the pit deftly as a mountain goat. If not... well, there is a nice, dark pool down there. Taking a little morning dive can't hurt.

[Rebonack]

[Pyramid on a Volcanic Island]

Oh yeah.

When weird stuff starts happening Magdalene stops.

"No? But I figured this place might be like one of the realms of the gods. Can't just gate out of those. Gotta find an exit," she replies.

Hmm.

More pictures.

Showing them leaving?

Ugh. Why does it have to draw her with a full set of antlers every single time? She has seriously gone out of her way to avoid letting those things grow in. Typically it's a bad sign when someone like her has more than just little nubs.

"Finding an exit is pretty easy in here, though," she adds, gesturing at the doorway. "They just go somewhere else?"

More and more she's thinking Leah is right. This place is just a doorway hub for getting from one pyramid to another. It seems to be... kind of aware? The pictures showing them walking out are definitely a reaction to her trying to rift.

"What do you think? Head outside and look around again? Oooor...?"


[Marlick Bay Aftermath]

"Everything? Haha, I hardly get this stuff myself. But I can try?" Arukhael laughs. "I'll go slow. Speak up if you've got any questions, okay?"

Geeze where to start...

"Okay. So, I came to the Nexus from this world called Earth, right? I know there are a bunch of them. But on mine there's this conflict. On the one side are the fae trying to eat the world from the foundation up. On the other side are the empyreans, trying to make everything like the heavens. That second one is us now. Humanity is caught in the middle, just trying to survive. I used to be human. I think you were, too? You looked like a sorceress. I was a sorcerer, too. But my mutations weren't as obvious as yours."

He offers Selekhael an apologetic look.

"Must have been rough for you."

[bc56]

"I'm from Earth too!" Selekhael exclaims. Although that doesn't sound like her Earth. "No, I'm not a sorceress. I'm human now. I was something called a tiefling, I was, uh, devil-touched." Then she hears his sympathies. "It, uh, was. My parents abandoned me, I couldn't, uh, go out in public without, uh, people trying to, uh, hurt me." She shivers. Clearly something horrible happened in her past, something talking about it can't help but dredge up. "But I'm human now!" she says with false brightness, "That means I was, uh, cleansed!" Right?

[Reinholdt]

[Pyramid on a volcanic island]

"Riiight. Remind me to tell you it some time." Leah's not nearly as good a story teller as Rachel is though. Kinda bad at it honestly.

Regardless, she stops clinging to the pillar and brushes at her clothes to smooth them out and get the dirt off them.

"Honestly? I don't see much point in exploring further. We've got the gist of how things work, and the longer we stay here, the more likely we are to run into those gorillas again."

She points at the symbols.

"Though I would posit that this building is intelligent on some level and trying to actively communicate with us. Hey pyramid spirits! Can you show us the way to your central control room?" If there is a central control room. Still, trying to talk to it is probably more effective than wandering blindly.

[Shadowcaller]

Spoiler: Quotes

Show

Vigil's Creed 4: Black Flag

Blanche turns to give the order - but the words halt as she sees the change in course, pausing to process this for a second. Hope brightens her features. Anika and the others may not be responding to their communicators, but it looks like they're having an effect in there! Still, a bit more of a misalignment wouldn't hurt.

"Fire a volley on the side of that ship!" she orders.

[No Longer Any Moonwells Involved]

~No one is responding to my hails,~ Geneva says, frustration creeping into her mental voice. ~So either they all lost their communicators or...~

Something terrible happened.

The chances of three people all losing their communicators seems unlikely.

Though... It's possible that whatever the demon ship is made of is blocking the signal somehow? The communicators haven't been tested in this specific environment so that's a possibility.

[Moonwell Convergence]

Oh.
Oh.

Awen quickly realizes that she has to change her priorities.
Word of Secrets. That's what that other demon did to kill itself, right? After seeing that last one do that, she had thought of a couple different ways to prevent them from doing it again. However, she didn't expect them to be able to do this while asleep. It's probably because of this telepathic thing that they're doing. If she had known this would happen, then she maybe could have come up with a magic that could cut off the telepathy to give her time, or that could send some sort of mental damage along the telepathy, or whatever, but...
...she suspects she doesn't have enough time to just sit there and come up with something.

Previously, her plan was to (1) stop the other demon with the flame thrower. (2) With the help of the others, figure out how this thing is flying and then crash it into the ocean. And then, (3) kill this body after nullifying its senses so that she wouldn't have to feel the pain.

...

New plan.
(1) Tear out her/the demon's own throat and use suffocation magic, in case that somehow stops this word or whatever. She's not sure how their anatomy works so...she's got to try both things just in case.
(2) Hit random things on the panels, hope it works. Not enough time to figure out how they work.
(3) Tear out her own heart. The fingers on this demon probably aren't as piercing as her own fingernails, so she might have to use a magic for that, too.
Also.
Ow.
Even just imagining doing this to herself - even if this isn't her own body - feels really painful. And this demon's body doesn't even have the benefit of that one pain-pleasure swapping spell, since she already used it on her own body.

Awen breathes in to mentally prepare herself.
She says something, and a claw-weapon forms from the shadows of the demon's hand.
As the witch exhales, she places the weapon up against her throat. She casts one more spell on this body, to crush the lungs. She instinctively wants to fight against it - suffocation isn't always fun - but ultimately lets it happen. And then plunges the shadowy weapon into her throat.

Once that's done, her hand - the one without the weapon - starts pressing random places on the mist-control. As she does this, she silently prays to all the gods she knows that this does something.
And then, once she manages to pull out the weapon from her throat, she moves it down to her chest, where she thinks the heart is, and plunges the claws in then scoops, hoping this body dies quickly. Dying slowly sounds awful. While waiting, she doesn't stop randomly pressing the mist.

Moonwell Convergence
Saint Lazarus doesn't really have a good counter to a flame spirit thing trying to steal her sword. I mean, aside from trying to twist it out of the flame daemon's grip and maybe kick it. She's not sure if kicking it will actually work, but I mean, it's either that or punching, and punching would involve taking a hand off the sword. This definitely isn't going well for her. Hopefully one of her allies can do something about this, because she's fresh out of good ideas.

Moonwell Convergence

Lazarus and Anika

It isn't really pulling Lazarus blade, it's simply holding onto it as she's trying to pull it away. As if it's trying to use the sword as a lever to pull itself out of the fire-tank.

But before she can kick it there is a loud sound of an explosion and the entire ship starts shaking violently. Anika who was preoccupied with mauling the fiends face both fall over. Either landing on the metal floor or on the poor ghoul knight if she doesn't move away in time.

Awen

How far Awen gets into her plan of action depends on how quickly she executed each one as the ship starts shaking violently. While the demon she's possessing is relatively safe as its wearing a form of safe belt her own body is likely to fall to the floor or worse, hit her head against the metal walls as she obelisk ship steers sharply to the right after being hit by VIGIL's broadside.

Meanwhile, she can still hear that metallic voice in her, or rather the demons, head going on about purging her from the system. This has no practical effects as of yet however.

Vigil's Creed 4: Black Flag - No longer any moonwells involved

She obelisk ship is clearly struggling and makes no move to avoid the full broadside that VIGIL unleashes upon it. It starts to divert even more off course and by this point it look like it's just going to scrape by the VIGIL ship.

Which is exactly what it does a moment later.

Blanche might just lose her balance (or not as perhaps her cat tail is useful for something) as the floor underneath her shakes as she sees the obelisk ship just hits the far end of the quarter deck. It's not enough to actually break the hull but it does send the ship into a spin.

If Geneva currently is levitating she will largely be spared from the ships movements but will still be subjected to adventurers falling towards her as they lose their footing.

[Operation Sea Slug]

Titania pick up Lannereth's scent quickly as its carried along with a light ocean breeze coming in from the south, aka right behind her.

Leopold is still going to be frozen in fear though no matter how many slaps he gets. Not that he would be at all useful fighting a dragon lich in the first place. He can't fight, so that leaves freeze or flee and as the others weren't running there seemed to be only one option.

But as the dragon steps forward he seems to reconsider his options. By this point, his pants are already wet and he's trembling.

Their foe seems to smile more than usual as they open their skeletal maw wide and they can see black energy building between its jaws.
Then Will screams and for a moment the purple eye-orbs of the dragon look down at him. A moment of distraction that's just enough for his giant club to hit it straight in the chest.
The energy that was building in its maw disappears and instead their would-be killer roars in pain.

Then they can hear a familiar voice.
"Hello? Was that you Vizzy?" If they turn to look around they can see the lich in her gnoll disguise slowly emerging from some bushes. She doesn't exactly seem to be in a hurry, supporting herself on a metal staff she seems to have found somewhere.
Then she stops to stare at the dragon. "Well, goodness gracious, so it is!" She then turns to face Titania and Will and gestures hesitantly at them. "And... you people. We have met before too, haven't we?" Her eyes narrow as she tries to get a better look at them.

The dragon have stopped roaring and indeed stopped caring about the little group as all its hateful attention now seems to be directed to Lannereth.

[Vahnavoi]

[Pyramid on a volcanic island]

Leah is on to something.

In response to her questions, the glyphs turn into lines and zoom past her, forming arrows on the floor and walls, pointing towards the stairwell. The stairwell changes before their eyes: where there were spiraling stairs going up, there is now a tunnel going straight ahead. They can see blinking lights at the end of it, so whatever's beyond won't be the same as the rooms before.

Simultaneously, the blue circles marking the side passages and the hole above go dark. If Leah or Magdalene go and test, they can find there are no tunnels there anymore, just smooth walls.

If they venture through the new tunnel, they come into an irregular, roughly elliptical room. In stark contrast to the tunnel, the walls of the room are all made from some pink, spongy material. Red and blue cables are intertwined in its structure - they pulsate to the beat of Leah's heart. Flashes of light, or electricity, perhaps, travel through the spongy matter frequently and seemingly at random.

On the wall left to the entrance, there are two big, circular screens. They seem to show real time, moving image of the room itself - at least until Leah turns to look directly at them, at which point they turn into infinite tunnels, as if Leah was staring into a tube of mirrors. If Magdalene happens to be standing in her field of view when this happens, Magdalene's image will repeat on the screens to infinity.

In the middle of the room, facing the screens, is a chair. It is absolutely black, similar to the interior walls of the pyramid, but feels soft and leathery to the touch, for the most part. The footrests and armrests have mechanical restraints that feel cold and metallic to the touch. Overall, in shape, it resembles a dentist's chair, should either Leah or Magdalene be familiar with such contraptions.

Before the chair, at roughly chest height, hovers a perfectly square black slate, sixty centimeters by sixty centimeters, five centimeters thick. Next to it, there is another floating disk, in shape reminescent of a flattened six-chamber revolver cylinder. Each "chamber" houses what looks like syringe, filled with blue ectoplasm. They are connected to the base of the chair by glowing tubes. Both floating platforms can, with slight effort, be pushed around, lifted higher or pressed lower.

If either of the two look at the floating square, blue glyphs appear on its surface. It has limited room, so the glyphs change rather rapidly, creating what's essentially a low frame rate animation. It depicts Magdalene strapping Leah into the chair, then standing behind Leah as a cone shape seems to be projected outwards from Leah's eyes. Then, Magdalene takes one of the syringes and stabs it into Leah's left temple. The cone shape is then filled by what looks like moutaineous scenery. Once it reaches its end, the series begins again.

[Rebonack]

[Marlick Bay Aftermath]

"Probably a different Earth," Arukhael reasons. "Since I accidentally blundered into the Nexus I found out that there are LOTS of them. Some are a little different. Some are really different. When I saw past-you her magic felt... dark and squirmy. Like those creepy things that crawl up out of the Bottomless Pit. Going through apotheosis, changing from a mortal to an empyrean, definitely would have cleansed that from you."

Then?

He frowns slightly. Selekhael obviously isn't from his home world. She wouldn't have all the hang-ups that he grew up with. But given that she's the first person he's met who ALSO went through apotheosis he's really curious about her experiences. Arukhael decides not to voice the fact that the Watchers often refer to his kind as devils. Selekhael seems glad that she escaped the taint of the Pit and he doesn't want to rain on her parade.

"Hey, so, my Church back home? They teach that if someone becomes an empyrean the old person just sort of... dies. And the empyrean isn't really them. It's a monster pretending to be them. And I was always terrified of that fate dangling over my head like a sword on a string. But then it actually happened to me and I definitely don't feel like I'm pretending. I still feel like I'm me, just... more than I used to be."

He gives Selekhael a scrutinizing look.

"Is that how it was for you, too?"


[Pyramid on a Volcanic Island]

Oh hey cool.

The other passages vanished.

Great job Leah!

Well, if they DO become stuck then Madalene has at least figured out how to piss off the pyramid enough that it's willing to kick them out. Provoking it might not be the BEST plan but it sure is A plan.

So. New tunnel down? Definitely different from the others time to check it out. And what do they find? Weird brain room. Two windows. A brief flash of a WHOLE bunch of Magdelenes as she walks between Leah and the panels. Now, Magdalene might not be the sharpest crayon in the box but seeing herself repeated like that causes a flash of realization.

"It's like we're inside your brain and those two windows are your eyes," Magdalene reasons. "So when you look at 'em they show what you're looking at right? Here-"

Magdalene positions herself so that she's off to the side of the chair, perpendicular to the windows. She waves her arms around a bit. "Look at me, not at the windows."

She wants to see if she'll pop up on the screen again.

Not really feeling the whole stabbing thing, though. This pyramid wants them to do some REALLY weird (rose).

[VIGIL and Not Moonwells]

Well.

By this time Geneva is feeling pretty okay. Well enough to levitate back off the deck and begin floating like she typically does. Honestly she's almost wholly unfamiliar with just moving around physically. It's really awkward. But what she's pretty good at is manipulating things mentally. Like, say, all the adventurers stumbling around when the ships collide!

~I've got you!~

Little pink glows flash across the deck, offering support for the adventures to catch onto instead of going sprawling. So many discrete instances of psychokinesis puts some strain on her, but thankfully it's only for a few moments until they regain their footing.

[bc56]

Selekhael gives a little shrug. "No one, uh, ever told me anything about, uh, empyreans. But, uh, I never went to church either. I, uh, couldn't. They'd have, uh, killed me. Or worse." But she understands what he's really trying to ask. "Uh, yes? I still feel like myself. Just, uh, bigger. Myselfier?"

[Dr.Gunsforhands]

[Workout Beach]

When the aquatic electrode attacks, a bolt of lighting arcs from the sky to its navigational cap and into the water where the boat was a split second before. It's good motivation! By timing their strokes to quickly pull away just before each lightning strike, Beth and Karasu dash through the rest of the course and run the boat aground in a hurry.

Beth jumps out and awkwardly lifts the boat over her head. If nothing else, it can keep the rain off of their heads. The angry buoy is displeased and bobs up and down, trying to trip the landlubbers with crashing waves.

[UncleWolf]

Operation Seaslug

Titania was eternally grateful that Will had found his courage and seemed more than ready to face the dangers the world had in store for them...but now was not the time for excessive bravado. Her mandibles clatter in nervousness as she drags the two close, attempting to use her body to shield them from the incoming dragon's breath...but it never comes. The sight of the lich and her words ease most of the tension from her shoulders and she lets them slump with a sigh. "We have met before, yes. And if you've any recommendations on how we can escape or defeat this dragon, we would be much obliged."

[Deathkeeper]

Operation Sea Slug

Seeing the skeletal dragon reel might be one of the most gratifying sights of his life. Though...maybe his blood was burning a little too hot for the situation. Whoops. But they're alive, aren't they?
Will's weapon reappears in his hand with a flash of light. Huh. Well, now that he has a second the front is kind of wedge-shaped. Surely that's not supposed to be an edge.
"Hello again, Ma'am. We'd be very grateful for some help." What's with the sudden old lady routine? Is Lan trying to trick the demon thing into thinking she's a senile old lady instead of a spooky skeleton too? She might have been old before, but she had definitely seemed more all-there than someone who forgets about someone in fifteen minutes.

[Reinholdt]

[Pyramid on a Volcanic Island]

Well their options have become vastly limited now, so with a shrug at Magdalene, Leah heads down the new tunnel to an area that's too... familiar. Like she's been here before, but she hasn't. It had an intimacy she couldn't put into words. And it disturbed her as her heart started to beat just a little faster.

Leah looks at the infinite screens for a while, then to Magdalene when she requests, the focus of the windows shifting to the girl who hides her antlers. "No..." Leah mouth twitches slightly as she protests Magdalene's assertion, even though the evidence currently supports it. "It's just a... representation, a fancy exhibit," Leah's mind creaks under the strain as she rationalizes the irrational. "Like they have at a science museum for kids. That's all... Look."

She points at the panel suggesting they inject ectoplasm into Leah's brain. "That's the same stuff that's been communicating with us right? So it's just trying to tell us that if we have some of it in our brains we can understand it. See what it sees and all that." This wasn't actually Leah's brain, just a hint as to how to better communicate. Yeah.

Yeah.

"I mean, it could also be a trap. Those gorillas we saw might have had pyramid ectoplasm injected into their heads." She doesn't recall them bleeding in ectoplasm though.

[Vahnavoi]

[Pyramid on a volcanic island]

The flashes of light inside the room change place and grow more intense as Leah freaks out. It might be enlightening, if Leah or Magdalene knew more about how a brain processes emotions.

The animation on the black slate changes slightly in response to Leah's words: it now shows Leah and Magdalene forcing one of the eyeless humanoids on the chair and jamming the syringe in its head. Each time, the series ends in a big, blue X being drawn over the entire picture and the slate going completely dark for five seconds, before starting the series again.