Zelsys stood leaning against the brick wall, smiling and inspecting the gemstone as she waited for the three soldiers to be ready to leave. While at first glimpse it had seemed to be obsidian-black, it was in fact partially translucent and heavily fogged with Nigredo, a mercurial silver glimmering within its center if the light hit it just right.
Her smile grew to a grin when she noticed Makhus frozen, captivated by the tiny gem, whilst Zefaris didn’t seem to pay it any particular min...
2020-09-16 10:31:10 +0000 UTC
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She also saw the foreigner, zigzagging at inhuman speeds towards the beast and trailing silver-green ribbons of Fog as she went. Expecting it to do no more than distract the monstrosity for a brief moment, she tried invoking Headpiercer Arts, to channel the Viriditas she had just ingested into a gunshot.
Her Aether was just about above average, and her grasp of Aethermancy was, as the Tablet suggested, rudimentary - but it was enough for what she wanted to do. Zefaris had no forma...
2020-09-15 12:11:18 +0000 UTC
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The very glass tubes that once connected it to the still had been melded to what was left of the creature’s arteries by crusty, scab-covered clots.
Something had punched a hole into its rib cage, whether it was the shot she hit it with during their previous battle or something else, and from this angle, Zelsys had a clear shot. She had no choice but to take it. Taking another deep breath and bracing against the barricade, she brought the gun to bear and worked the trigger lever, fight...
2020-09-14 13:32:38 +0000 UTC
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“T-the next step up. It’s a Necrobeast. How the fuck did it cross the conversion barrier?! Those things are two thirds pure Nigredo by volume!”
None of them knew what a Necrobeast was. Zelsys was not willing to admit that ignorance, but she was very willing to try teasing the information out of the officer even in this grave a situation. “A Necrobeast? Aren’t those…” she trailed off.
The officer nodded, in his element when given the opportunity to have the last word....
2020-09-13 08:32:45 +0000 UTC
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Straining to move, Sigmund raised his left hand and pried the fingers of his right open one by one. Threat turned to condescending pity when the officer realized what was happening, remarking “Some sort of paralytic sickness from mucking about in the zone, huh?” as he turned the key left, waiting for the machine to go silent before turning it to the right again.
“Alright, grab the handle again. You Ikesians never know where to stop, that’s how you get these bizarre conditi...
2020-09-12 11:56:40 +0000 UTC
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His eyes leered toward Zelsys. He scanned her up and down before he added, with notably less venom to his tone, “You too, snowtop.”
She chuckled at the remark, waiting for the officer to begin walking before she did. He effectively backed into the open doorway, keeping both his eyes and his gun trained on the Ikesians that followed behind Zelsys. She had to bend down slightly to pass through the door, and once inside, what she saw was… Thoroughly underwhelming. The room was a squa...
2020-09-11 08:35:48 +0000 UTC
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She stretched out on the hard mattress, her feet hanging out of the bunk, head resting on her hands. All it took was a couple deep breaths, and she slipped into the realm of sleep.
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A mixture of smells and sounds assaulted the senses. Zelsys instinctively grabbed to the right, grabbing the cleaver before she even opened her eyes. The pale morning sun shone through the doorway. The smell t...
2020-09-10 08:23:50 +0000 UTC
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Sigmund was just about to play into the conversation further by asking how he’ll distinguish the Rubedo bottle from the others if all of them are completely covered in seals, but Makhus interrupted him with an offhanded gesture at the Tablet. “Does the sickness show up as a trait?” he asked.
“Ah, I… Have not checked those,” he confessed, raising the Tablet and skimming his attributes again. “I should do that.”
The fingers of his left hand hovered above the projecti...
2020-09-08 08:54:03 +0000 UTC
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The blonde chuckled, turning her eye toward the beast’s carcass. “Yeah, that’s fair. Seen weirder shit in the zone,” she remarked. Zelsys had noticed her looking, but she didn’t particularly care. She’d let the riflewoman make her own choices, and in the meantime, she was just fine with sitting there and looking pretty.
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Sigmund found the violent buzzing sensation that ho...
2020-09-07 07:26:30 +0000 UTC
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Zelsys was very much content to continue leaning against the transport’s pleasantly cool metal, but she wasn’t one to eavesdrop. When she heard Spliteye mumbling something about a foreigner in her unconscious state, she decided to join Makhus and Sigmund around the firepit. She was curious, but she wasn’t disrespectful of one’s privacy. Even so, she still caught muttered descriptors like “tall” and “brown” as she walked away from the transport.
Neither of the men said an...
2020-09-06 08:19:20 +0000 UTC
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Makhus did his best to ignore Zelsys as he walked out onto the clearing, making a beeline for the still. The entire time she watched, casually leaning on the transport. “How’s the sickness? No aftershock seizures?” he offhandedly asked Sigmund as he tinkered with the glass and copper monstrosity, adjusting the barrier-stone fragment in its mount with one hand and the tube its condensation fed into with the other.
“I had a rather bad one, but I got over it,” the bearded m...
2020-09-05 07:38:09 +0000 UTC
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A full C would’ve been good enough to qualify for further specialist training back during the war. “Were I more talented, I would’ve been there when they stormed central command,” he thought, justifying his low military position as the reason for his survival of the war. He wasn’t lying to himself, even though he was using the truth to justify his own lack of ambition.
“She’ll probably end me if I go rootin’ around in her stuff, but she won’t mind if I che...
2020-09-04 21:26:01 +0000 UTC
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He remained motionless, but he blinked thrice in a row.
“Three blinks?” asked Zelsys.
“That means yes. Two mean no.”
A loud rumble echoed from Zelsys’ stomach, and she instinctively looked around for her unfinished mess tin of soup. “Still warm. Good enough,” she said, scooping up a spoonful.
While she ate, Spliteye left the fire pit and disappeared into the transport. The screaming of rusty hinges echoed through the night for a good couple mi...
2020-09-04 21:20:32 +0000 UTC
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It was lumbering towards her in some lopsided approximation of a charge, fangs bared and black foam bubbling from the corners of its mouth. The absence of its left foreleg made the creature’s gait skewed to the right as it tried to compensate, exposing its neck.
Zelsys inhaled sharply through a toothy grin, her face as much a snarl as the beast’s, her eyes shining in silver just as the beast’s did in yellow. She tossed its tongue aside and gripped the cleaver with both hand...
2020-09-04 21:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Zelsys ripped the cleaver from its back, raising it in preparation to butcher the thing as it thrashed helpless on the ground.
The moment her blade left the beast’s back, its flesh pulled itself back together and even its spine reattached, putrid black blood congealing instantaneously within the hole to compensate for lost mass. Almost instantly it was back on its feet, the only things that stopped it from instantly lashing out at Zelsys being its own size and a well-time...
2020-09-04 08:58:46 +0000 UTC
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Spliteye’s bullet was embedded into its forehead, but it seemed unaffected, ponderously making its way towards the source of its newest pain. Zelsys could see most of its front half now, its wretched heart visibly beating beneath exposed ribs.
She grabbed the lever and pushed down.
Click.
Click.
The gun erupted with a blinding flash and a deafening boom, the recoil so forceful it threw Zelsys into a brief backwards roll. A fleshy thunk resounded, fo...
2020-09-03 16:00:33 +0000 UTC
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For a brief few minutes she sat there, eating food offered up by damned soldiers and taking in the beauty of a place at the very edge of desolation, acutely aware of how transitory this situation was.
It was a peace like no other.
“Sorry ‘bout the aggression back there. Red sickness ain’t nice,” Sigmund said, turning his wizened eyes toward her again. The dancing flames painted his face in shadows deeper than any night, drawing out a harrowed visage that...
2020-09-03 06:12:24 +0000 UTC
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“...And that’s what it’s doing,” she said in a hushed voice. “It’s already halfway done. Do we just wait for it to finish?”
“It’s a better idea than trying to interrupt the process,” Zelsys responded with faux authority. Spliteye let out a sigh of uneasy relief, blinking a couple times as her pupils contracted. Before she could suggest a further course of action or really say anything at all, the tan woman shot upwards with a vigorous proclamation of “Well, no poin...
2020-09-02 17:31:52 +0000 UTC
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RECORD FORMAT NOT RECOGNIZED
REGISTER NEW FORMAT
OVERWRITE RECORD
Not a bit of hesitation crossed his mind before he pressed the latter, only to find himself paralyzed by the shooting of buzzing pain a hundred times more intense than anything the Tablets dished out during scans. He felt the edges of his vision fading into silver, then lost consciousness.
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2020-09-02 05:49:30 +0000 UTC
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The Swordsman watched it unfold with some amusement before his attention returned to the silver-haired amazoness across from him.
“Second question?”
“Why were you out there when you found me?”
“We were huntin’ an animal that had briefly crossed the barrier. All those dead plants ‘round the crossin’ point were just from the creature walkin’ around for a bit, so I figured it had to be a walkin’ Nigredo battery. Probably a mutated bear or somesuc...
2020-09-01 18:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Eventually, the Swordsman piped up again. “The Tablet. Mind if I take a look?” he asked.
“I’ve got a couple questions first. Three of them.“
“Shoot.”
“What exactly is Rubedo Sickness?”
A dark chuckle rumbled from his mouth, and he briefly glanced out the door, remarking “So she told you. Too careless with potentially sensitive intel, that one.” before he turned his eyes back towards Zelsys. “Near the tail-end of the war, when things were really ...
2020-09-01 07:45:20 +0000 UTC
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The bottle rang with a sound not unlike someone pouring water down a well, small wisps of bright red Fog escaping his ears.
When the flow stopped he hurriedly corked the bottle shut, coughing up a few puffs of Red Fog. “It gets easier the more y’ do it my ass…” he grumbled, placing the seal-covered bottle back in its place and reaching for a green one. The motion of his arm wafted a small portion of the Red Fog towards her before it could dissipate. It carried the smell of comba...
2020-08-31 18:12:50 +0000 UTC
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As she pondered whether they could be altered to fit given the tools at hand a faint buzzing static washed over her legs. Having noticed that this feeling typically meant something arcane was at play she tried to pull them up again, and a barely-visible amount of Fog rose from the fabric as they stretched to fit - even though they were slightly loose in some places, and rather tight in others. The waistband in particular had only stretched far enough to fit, and the belt that was...
2020-08-31 07:16:04 +0000 UTC
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It was matte-black with a silver shine to its edge, and somehow the only thing on that door-table that was completely clean of blood. She couldn’t tear her eyes off it until she walked into the transport and its wall did it for her, and she immediately scanned her new surroundings out of instinct.
Where she had expected a cramped and filthy arrangement of as many seats as could fit, she was met with a mostly complete living space for four people - two bunk beds, metal lockers, e...
2020-08-30 18:37:57 +0000 UTC
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It was a metal pipe that led from amidst the embers of the fire pit to what Zelsys recognized as a repurposed Fog Engine, atop which there sat a befuddling tangle of rune-etched flasks and tubes, held together with wire and pieces of scrap metal. There were two fragments clearly taken from the shattered barrier-stone suspended in the tangle, apparently somehow involved in condensing Viriditas, which ran down the stones and into a tube that led into a half-full bottle on the ground. As Zelsys ...
2020-08-30 09:06:41 +0000 UTC
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A mischievous spark made her want to place the Tablet atop the blonde’s head and use it to measure just how much taller she was, but the mental image was sufficient. For a while the four of them walked down the trail in silence, the Swordsman giving the occasional backwards glances, whilst Spliteye downright stared when she thought Zelsys wasn’t looking. An hour, perhaps two - it wasn’t easy to tell in the monotonous quagmire of this place. The only measure of how far from the living fo...
2020-08-29 20:36:31 +0000 UTC
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The Swordsman raised the bottle to his mouth, pulled the cork out with his teeth, and took a short swig of the greenish liquid, then put the cork back in. A couple drops of the liquid clung to the stubble of his chin, evaporating into barely-visible wisps of emerald-green Fog as he spoke - slowly, deliberately, calmly. Carefully.
“Now… I won’t ask who you were on the outside, ‘cause it’s frankly better if we don’t know,” he said, gesturing with his sword as punctuation. ...
2020-08-29 11:28:00 +0000 UTC
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She grumbled as she jumped and grabbed it by the exposed portion, and it slipped out of the bandage with little resistance. With a relieved sigh, she turned her gaze in the direction she had heard human voices from, which had now become quieter and were accompanied by three pairs of approaching footsteps. Assuming they had heard her, she walked towards them.
Past one of the many bends of the path she saw them, and they saw her. Two men and a woman. Zelsys immediately assigned them nickn...
2020-08-29 01:17:05 +0000 UTC
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She turned her gaze to the landscape that stretched out beneath her, a gloom-cast sky hanging overhead. The hill whose slope she stood atop was surrounded by dead plants, gnarled leafless trees shook in the wind.
With caution and curiosity Zelsys walked down the hill, looking to and fro to get a bearing on her surroundings. As quickly as she began walking she stopped, captivated by the sight at her back. Far off in the distance, a great wall of dark stone reached into the s...
2020-08-28 15:18:45 +0000 UTC
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The cartridge fit snugly into the chamber, its base bearing a small etched symbol in the center. A forward push, another clack, and a twist to the right to lock the mechanism. The lever again sat in her palm, but it was no longer locked in place. It offered up significant resistance to a downward bend of the wrist, but with some effort it gave way with a satisfying click. Zelsys dared not push any further, aware that working the mechanism any further would likely result in a thunderous blast ...
2020-08-28 05:00:03 +0000 UTC
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