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Post by Deleted on Feb 2, 2017 21:10:21 GMT
The travel between Felici and Dagos had been simple. There was heavy traffic across the highway between the two made it a relatively safe, if stressful journey. Travelers on long drives were rarely happy, so enjoyable food was scarse. Still she made do well enough, and spent a little time in Dagos to recuperate before making the more dangerous leg of the journey. All the while, she still felt that same incessant pull that encouraged her to journey onward despite herself.
She missed Samuel, and would send him messages whenever she was confident she could do so in secrecy. They were always short and to the point. Things like, "Just passed Camlorn. Don't Worry. Dr. A.I." or, "Resting in Dagos. Preparing to travel alongside a caravan through The Jiwa." Even as she sent it, she knew it was madness. While she would not die the way her companions might, she knew that the stress would leave very little in the way of substance to sustain her.
She waited for a respectable group that charged a steep wage before departing with them. Those who charged too little or too much were often charlatans or bandits. She needed passage as much as the rest of their customers, so she settled for the best she could find within her limited time frame. She was thankful, for a moment, that she was no longer living, and would not be forced to pay. She'd send her feelings of gratitude as an aura amongst the caravan, hoping the good feelings would act as good omens, and help lead them all through this journey with good morale.
She could not feel the blistering sun, the soft ground that shifted beneath her that made every step a challenge, the way the metal of their vehicles burned. However, she quickly learned how a drink of water was a transformative experience that brought reprieve and refreshment in what was otherwise a drawn-out agony. She learned to feed in those brief moments upon her companions, and felt that reprieve for herself.
With such infrequent and brief moments to consume tasteful morsels of feeling, she began to understand their thirst and hunger. Such meagre offerings left her feeling a bit frayed at the edges. Her normally perfectly kept hair was a little wilder, her eyes a tad darker, and everything about her visage was a little less composed.
With the moon came a bitter cold. While elsewhere in the world it would have been a perfect sixty to seventy degrees (Fahrenheit), in days that reaches as much as one-hundred twenty, it was as if they'd traversed in to the tundra. They shivered and were uncomfortable a mere hour or so after the sun set, though quite grateful and filling in the interim. They set up camp, their all-terrain vehicles in a circle much like the wagons of old. They sat around a fire, eating and sleeping in relative silence. The journey was harrowing, and there was no energy left for recreation.
In these nights she kept watch. She'd send an errant message to Samuel, in the rare instances they had signal, letting him know she was alright. She was prepared to trigger every alarm in the convoy if necessary. She occasionally saw things that were surely no threat to her companions, though an entirely other matter to herself.
It was such a night that she surveyed the stars and the surrounding landscape, a vigilant guardian watching over those she traveled with as she waited for the morrow.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 3, 2017 2:22:18 GMT
spirit sighting
"Harrumph." ➼ @pink ➼ antagonistic ➼ rolled on 02/02/2017 ➼ 404 words | The shifting sand was home to a lot of creatures that only came out at night, the smallest of which were beetles that liked to burrow their way to the surface in search of whatever plant matter they could scavenge from the surface. It was often a long and fruitless search, but sometimes the creatures managed to find a wayward traveler, whether animal or otherwise. It was not the beetles that awoke the Spirit from its burrow, but the large creatures that smelled of sweat and exhaustion. The sand was hard from a long day of baking, but it began to crack and then turned back to powder as he emerged. Larger than an elephant was tall, this was no ordinary earth Spirit, but a desert guardian.
It was always best not to wake a desert guardian.
The sand poured from his dry flesh as he pushed himself up from the cool sand under the surface, lifting his two trunks to the air to clear them of debris. As he stood tall, it became apparent that he was bigger around than any three normal people. He huffed, shaking his massive head as the sand formed a small cloud around his face. Beads clinked from the ancient jewelry that adorned his tusks, ornaments of long-ago travelers that hadn't made it past his burrow. His blue eyes blinked at the small party of travelers, then blinked again as if he couldn't quite see them clearly. When he registered where the intruders were, he inhaled deeply, grumbling to himself in words that didn't appear in any human lexicon.
His massive hand curled into a fist as the other gathered up sand particles that floated from the ground to his waiting palm. Rolling his head around his shoulders, the Spirit snorted and huffed to himself, seeming intent on working himself up to something. From the growing ball of sand in his hand, odds were against it being friendly.
"You are intruding on my rest," he rumbled in the Olden Tongue, his voice nasal but deep. "You now belong to me."
The sand began to shift like waves on the ocean, filling the air with the particles. It didn't seem to bother the Spirit, whose blue eyes stayed open as it began to shift forward, heading straight for the party of humans. He trumpeted from both of his trunks as he attacked, like two discordant war horns.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 3, 2017 2:48:28 GMT
Azalea looked on in horror as she witnessed the large spirit, pachydermal in appearance, rose from beneath the sand. It postured like a wild animal working itself up to a fight, and then bellowed in a way that she understood.
We're in its territory.
It trumpeted like some sort of primal warcry, and inside her she could feel that will stirring, bringing about a memory. A memory...
"Hey!"
Azalea had turned about to see a ragged looking man approaching her. It'd been a long day at the convention, and she'd snuck out the back way to avoid fans. She immediately regretted doing so as the person quickly approached her. She had no security here, and there was no one who to protect her if the man turned out to be a threat. Still, she gave the man her most pleasant smile and replied, "Why hello. Did you enjoy the convention?"
He didn't respond. Instead he grasped her firmly by the shoulders, his strong hands digging in to her painfully, "Dr. Azalea. I love your work. I can't afford real games," his teeth were dark from lack of care, and smelled as if they were rotting, "and your guides got me to play games through the 21st Century Public Domain Archives." The smell of the rest of him now hit her like a truck. She'd begin to gag and cough as her eyes watered, but she did her best not to vomit, nor insult him. The crazed way he spoke to her, grasped her, did not seem to see her distress was terrifying.
"I'd be dead if it weren't for you. I beat Flaming Brand - Bloodlines. I beat it on Classic too, not that silly Phoenix Mode. I even did it a different way than you." He'd begin to shake her slightly, "See? We're alike, you and me. We really could be the genuine item." What?
"I love you, and I know, if you give me a chance, that you'll love me too. Please. Just let me come home with you. We can be together! We can play all those wonderful games, and I can touch you wherever you like, and we can get married and have kids! What do you say?"
Finally he was listening. He wasn't looking, or he could see her distress. He wasn't feeling, or he'd feel the way she trembled. Only her words mattered. Only her meek words barely audible as they forced their way through the threat of vomit and the tightness brought on by her tears and dread, "Please, sir, I beg of you: let me go."
He gave a wild shout, throwing her to the ground. She hit the ground hard, and immediately felt the warm wet response her skull gave to the paved parking lot beneath her. He was upon her, crying as if he was the one in agony. His strong hands wrapped around her throat, and began to squeeze so tightly there would be no chance of any other words escaping.
"Why? Why!?!" He wailed in anguish as he choked her. "We were going to be together. We were going to be so happy." Her vision began to fade. "We were going to have a family. I loved you. Why did you betray me..."
She screamed, ectoplasmic tears pouring down her face as she thrust the painful memory forward towards the being. She could see those moments between the shining darkness of it, like the memory was a light shining through the orb's prism so that you could get faint, distorted images of its contents through it. Her vision was blurred, but even she could make out the inky dark things that reached out from the sphere. It made a sound, like crackling electricity but screeching... as if alive. - perhaps not? She was not, after all, alive.
It would reach the being, and begin to grasp at him. Did it shock, did it implant him with the memories she had, or did it simply rack him with the amount of pain and agony that moment had upon her? She could not say. However, it did not seem to be a killing blow.
Run.
She leapt from where she had stood upon a large vehicle that was the descendant of the 21st Century HMMWV, not hitting the ground so much as gliding over it, before she fled away from the convoy. She did not want to die, but there was a part of her that had grown to care for the people in the convoy that had suffered this trip in ways she could no longer understand. She would fight for her life. She would lure it away from those sleeping people, ignorant of the danger. She would not die here.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 4, 2017 18:42:56 GMT
spirit sighting
"Harrumph." ➼ @pink ➼ antagonistic ➼ rolled on 02/02/2017 ➼ 568 words | This Spirit had preyed on humans for years beyond reckoning, and he had thought that he understood what humans would do when they were attacked. They either ran, screaming in terror like the awkward, hairless monkeys they were, or they would try to fight him. Their weapons would do nothing against his rocky flesh, and he would drag them down to the depths of the sand, at the center of his domain. Their fragile bodies couldn't handle the pressure down there. But as he charged at them, wielding the sand stream like a whip, one of them did something entirely unexpected and new.
It stopped in its tracks, looking at the odd ball that hung in the air, heavy with emotions. What human had the ability to do something like this? Only Spirits could communicate with emotion, and even the Spirits had never conceived of a weapon like this one. The orb tracked toward him, warping the spirit world with the weight of it, and his piggy blue eyes widened before the edge of it slammed into him. He staggered backward a step with the force of it, but what happened next was something he'd never accounted for.
He was a human. Not just any human, but a woman halfway between adulthood and old age. Small and fragile, terribly mortal. As she turned her attention to an unexpected noise, she saw a human man. The Spirit was not prepared for the sudden jolt of terror that pierced it to the core, seeing that wild human face. He was larger than she was, and she was all alone, a ripe target for the taking. Prey. The Spirit had never before been prey.
"Why hello. Did you enjoy the convention?"
The human was grabbing her shoulders, holding her in place as fear seemed to close down every other reaction than standing there, petrified. It hurt. The grip hurt her shoulders, but it wasn't lessening. What kind of monster was this human, with eyes like those, to cause enough terror to stop the heart? His scent was like that of a rotting animal, and it was heavy in her chest, making her eyes water and her throat try to close. What fragile bodies these humans had, that a scent could be so powerful...
The man demanded to be her mate. Her terror increased, until the Spirit was aching with the weight of it. Her small voice came from a body that they shared, only serving to anger the human more. The man threw them to the ground, and the Spirit experienced pain... Their head hurt, and the ground was wet with their own red blood. They didn't have time to recover as the human came back again, closing his hands around their throat and choking the air from them. It screamed at them, screamed words that were fading... fading...
The Spirit shrieked in terror and agony as the memory finally released it, and a shock-wave of sand burst from where it stood, slamming against the vehicle that stood nearest to it. The other humans didn't seem to understand what had just happened, but the Spirit was starting to. Where was that damned human? Where was the one that had hurt him so badly? Whipping the sand in a broad arc, it trumpeted in rage as it tried to gather them all to itself.
He would find who had done this.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 4, 2017 18:56:28 GMT
No. The way the creature lashed out at the vehicle, it must not have seen her escape. She was still visibly shaking from the first memory, and the toll it took on her, but she had to make another. She had to get its attention; to stop it.
"Hey! I'm over here!"
She knew the second the voice on the other side of the phone sounded so official. She didn't want to believe it. He told her the one thing she'd dismissed; the one thing her mother feared.
She didn't hear as he told her he was sorry for her loss, or how he understood this was a hard thing to hear, yet he wanted to bring her in for questioning. She began to sob.
Dick. Her father had taken so much from her as a child; robbed her of her innocence. They'd been forced to change their names and identities when her mother finally took a stand as a witness against him. After years of cruelty, it was the act of defiling her child that finally brought her to act.
She'd thought she was safe. She thought her mother was safe. The heavy sobs brought pain to her chest. The wailing sounded unnatural in her ears. She did not know a human could make such a sound, and it only caused her to cry harder.
The guilt was overwhelming. "It's my fault. My mother tried to tell me, tried to warn me; said this would happen. I dismissed her, told her she was being paranoid; told her not to worry. She's dead, and it's my fault for doing nothing." She thought as she clutched her chest.
She didn't even notice that the communicator had long since clicked, indicating the end of the call. She clutched it with a grip that made her knuckles white. If she were to let go now, she would fall with it, and be shattered beside it.
She did not know how long she sat there, and wept, and wailed, and writhed in agony, tormented by her own guilt. She did it until her body had no strength left to act, or to feel. She could not keep her eyes open, or think about how she needed to lie in her bed. She'd fall asleep in that chair that night.
As she launched another orb towards the being, clutching her chest as the overwhelming guilt resurfaced, and would have surely caused her heart to stop being had she been alive, she turned weakly and began to run.
Her legs, for the first time since death, felt heavy, but her many nights watching the desert gave her a faint hope as she had a plan.
She did not intend to die this night.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 6, 2017 13:46:49 GMT
spirit sighting
"Harrumph." ➼ @pink ➼ antagonistic ➼ rolled on 02/02/2017 ➼ 575 words | The humans screamed as they whipped toward him, pushed by the sand that he'd used to get in behind them. In the roar of the moving sand and his own trumpeting, he didn't hear the voice that called for his attention, but when he saw the orb formulating again, he looked toward it. His sand whip disintegrated into a pile of powder, no longer viable as a weapon without his direct attention, and more than a couple of the humans fell over in the sand. Their feet, so pathetically unable to get a grip in the sand, scrambled away from the massive Spirit as it turned toward the being that had done it the first time. So, this was where it had been hiding from him... He clenched his fists as he began to walk toward it. Such a tiny creature to have caused him such pain...
With a furious trumpeting, it rushed toward the creature, only to watch another orb launch through the air toward him. He tried to move out of the way, but speed and maneuverability had never been one of his strong suits. He even tried to put on a wall of sand between himself and the item, but it simply phased through as if nothing had been in its way. The black ball of emotions and energy hit him with a surprising amount of force, and he was back in the world of memories again.
He was the human woman again, this time even younger than the first memory. There was human technology at his ear, and he was shocked to hear that a human voice was coming out of the top of it. What a bizarre device... Perhaps it was a human brand of magic, but he was more inclined to believe that it was one of the items that had made Spirit territories so difficult to establish near human cities. Disgusting creatures... His own anger and irritation almost knocked him clear of the memory, separating him from the human woman's soul too strongly, but then he felt something unexpected.
This pain wasn't physical, but it rose up in her chest like a physical ache, all the same. The human emotion... Grief. She was grieving. The price of mortality was living with the reality of death. He hadn't known it would hurt so much. Even worse, it was twisted by something else he'd never felt before, and it took him a few moments to put a name to it. Guilt... He felt such guilt, knowing that the death was his... errr, her... fault. It was all her fault, and now she would never see her mother again. How had hatred and grief twisted together so thoroughly? How did humans live with this kind of pain? This memory... that creature that had formed it... how dare she make him feel this way?
Pushing aside the memory with a monumental effort, the spirit trumpeted its rage and fear, its blue eyes glaring down at the slowly retreating figure in the sand. She would pay for her insolence. He would make sure of it. Lifting his enormous arms, he slammed his hands against the surface of the sand to create a wave of earth that sent dust into the air, clogging it in a dense cloud. The ground beneath the vehicles began to swallow their wheels, but he only had eyes for the small being that was trying to escape.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 6, 2017 14:02:07 GMT
The shockwaves running through the sand did not interfere with her slow, staggered movement as she floated above the earth, yet worked to her advantage as she saw the various creatures emerge from their burrows.
She'd watched the desert landscape her many nights of standing vigil, and had seen the way so many creatures seemed to appear from beneath the sand at night, much like her assailant. She'd wondered, if bad came to worse, if she too might employ a similar strategy.
She would leap with all her strength as a desert snake slithered and emerged from one such burrow, possessing one of the many grains of sand that fell back into it in the wake of the shockwaves and the snake's own movement. She would not try to stop the grain's fall, but simply rested within it as it rolled down the cavern which suddenly seemed massive to her, given its size in comparison to her own, and hoped the great being would attempt to locate her.
Once the grain had come to a halt, she'd emerge and plunge ever deeper in to the sands. Her mind tried to trick her in to feeling claustrophobic, and that she could not breathe. She'd hated the feeling of having her nose and face covered in life, and, given the nature of her death - suffocation - being buried within the sand was almost more terrifying than the thing that sought to kill her. It was only her strong desire to survive, her knowledge that to die now would mean true death, and the determination that only the terror of such knowledge could bring that allowed her to overcome these feelings to do what she must.
She'd wait there, noting the way the sands still shifted around her; waiting for them to cease. She'd try to calm her rising anxiety, and the overwhelming emotions that drove her simultaneously towards hunger and madness, and remember to rest and observe. She was not succeeding in her try.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 6, 2017 17:05:57 GMT
spirit sighting
"Harrumph." ➼ @pink ➼ antagonistic ➼ rolled on 02/02/2017 ➼ 359 words | It was gone... The creature had gone, and he couldn't feel its body in the crush of sand under his feet. Instead, he could feel other humans kneeling in the sand, covering their faces and trying to crawl away from the sudden sand-storm. He didn't let them go. If he couldn't get his quarry, he would be taking the rest of them to his domain. Their cries of terror were swallowed by the roar of the storm, but he wrapped tendrils of sand around their ankles and pulled them irresistibly down with all of the force of quick-sand. Such pretties... So many new trinkets to go through, once their bodies were pulverized to dust... But first things first, of course.
The Spirit began to sink back into the sand, and the sandstorm with him. Beneath his feet, the sand was swallowed at a rapid pace and he hunched over it with a shake of his back and shoulders. It took no more than thirty seconds for all trace of him to vanish entirely, taking all traces of the human excursion with him. Not even the vehicles remained above the sands, swallowed up by the sandstorm and the sand that had sunk beneath them. From his place beneath the cold moon's stare and the still-warm sands, the Spirit breathed a last huff of irritation, scattering the top layer of sand in a puff of breath like a small gust of wind.
Now he could slumber peacefully, awaiting the day that the bodies were gone and their metal trinkets remained. The vehicles... he had no use for, but it would fall in time, joining the bodies of horses and camels that had once been the main source of transportation over his desert. With the humans gone, and all trace of them lost to the sands, maybe he could work on forgetting those horrible emotions. That terrible fear and that grief that was so foreign and so painful. Being a human was a terrible burden, it decided, his home contracting to crush all movement from the human bodies that thrashed uselessly as they were crushed by the pressure.
A terrible burden indeed.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 6, 2017 17:16:05 GMT
When Azalea felt the majority of the movement cease, she'd rise to the surface.
Everything was gone. The spirit, the convoy; the people she'd attempted to protect. She'd failed. She'd collapse upon the desert and restrain herself to light sobs. She did not wish to wake the spirit a second time. She clutched at her chest in anguish, and bit her tongue to ensure she did not speak. She wished someone were there. She'd carried the burdens of her memories, the torment of feeling like she was suffocating once more, the terror of imminent death, and now there was nothing to feed from to bring some sort of balance to the way she felt.
She'd looked at the GPS trackers the caravan leaders had employed. It was only a short two to three day journey left for them. They'd almost made it.
Now they never would.
You lived. The pride interlaced guilt was a bitter drink to swallow. It demanded she succumb to her agony, or rise to her circumstances.
She stood, turned in the direction she knew she had to go, and took the first step. Her pace was slow as her legs were heavy. For the first time, she felt the weight of herself as she moved. The memories, combined with her present emotions, had taken a lot out of her. She'd never gone without feeding when she was even remotely to the point she found herself now. She wondered if she would make it, in the end. However, there was one thing she knew for certain, as she made her way to Elios: she would not die this night.
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