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taxonomites2013-03-12 03:25 am
theextras) wrote in taxonomites2013-03-12 03:25 am
Entry tags:
Moar Snowwww
The snow has gone from a winter storm to something truly impressive. Ground-level doors are nearly buried in it; windows reveal walls of solid white pressing against the glass. Chimneys have iced over, and cars are buried in deep drifts.
The trams stopped running two days ago, with polite notes reading Temporarily Out of Service - We Apologize for Any Inconvenience affixed to the frozen doors.
Taxon is very quiet.
The Extras huddle indoors, and the streets are long white swathes of virgin snow. No car horns, no hum of traffic. The river is iced as well, and the edges of the shore boast chunks of white ice floating in the black water.
Near the Sanctuary, a water main has burst in the night, and the day's slight increase in temperature thawed it enough to erupt and flood a street. The buildings of that street are hung with sheets of icicles, gleaming like someone's idea of a Christmas decoration taken beyond all reason.
The wind blows from the north, and skirls the snow into further drifts and piles. If you listen-- if you listen very carefully-- you can hear the sound of voices on the wind, and howls that cut as keenly as the Arctic wind.
If you must go outside, Taxonians, breathe slowly and carefully-- for an incautious breath can freeze the very lining of your throat.
And at night...? Well, tonight the howls become more than distantly-imagined sounds: tonight, white shapes stalk Taxon's white streets-- wolves the size of ponies, whose eyes flicker with blue fire and who are hungry for warm meat.
The trams stopped running two days ago, with polite notes reading Temporarily Out of Service - We Apologize for Any Inconvenience affixed to the frozen doors.
Taxon is very quiet.
The Extras huddle indoors, and the streets are long white swathes of virgin snow. No car horns, no hum of traffic. The river is iced as well, and the edges of the shore boast chunks of white ice floating in the black water.
Near the Sanctuary, a water main has burst in the night, and the day's slight increase in temperature thawed it enough to erupt and flood a street. The buildings of that street are hung with sheets of icicles, gleaming like someone's idea of a Christmas decoration taken beyond all reason.
The wind blows from the north, and skirls the snow into further drifts and piles. If you listen-- if you listen very carefully-- you can hear the sound of voices on the wind, and howls that cut as keenly as the Arctic wind.
If you must go outside, Taxonians, breathe slowly and carefully-- for an incautious breath can freeze the very lining of your throat.
And at night...? Well, tonight the howls become more than distantly-imagined sounds: tonight, white shapes stalk Taxon's white streets-- wolves the size of ponies, whose eyes flicker with blue fire and who are hungry for warm meat.
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Even if he could just emit tones, it'd do a lot to help. He could have inflection then.
Know what he needs? A xylophone. That's what he needs.
The little head nods in agreement, still facing Jason, then twists down to touch the wedged-in snowshoes. Yes, he'd be pretty slow, given that his shoes are broken.
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Jason nods at the gesture of the head towards his snowshoes. Not especially given to long-windedness himself, his first impulse is to leave it there, but, since the creature must be silent, then if he is also silent they will be very quiet indeed.
...although perhaps that isn't such a bad thing, when attempting to slip without significant combat through a possibly wolf-infested landscape. Hrmn.
"I would ask what you are," Jason does say, though, voice pitched slightly lower, "but I recognize that as-- impractical, at the moment. Are you--"
Slight pause, as he thinks how to phrase things in yes-or-no questions for the creature's sake. "--native to this city?"
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He may not technically be a person, but by golly, he does a heck of a better imitation than those things in the city! He has actual, organized thoughts and idiosyncratic motivations and all kinds of internal life. Great seething scads of it, in fact, whole flights of thought and fancy. He is even capable of near-creative work, rather than the much more obviously derivatives the Extras make.
The tp-tp-tp of his gait stops. He might not be capable of facial expressions, but just for this, he will freaking make some, Mr. Jason Blood, just to communicate how very unhappy he is at the assumptions behind your questions. He rummages in the snow a moment, then comes up with a short stick. This is broken in half, and then passed to the knot of spinal column that makes up his false head. Little mandibles form and grip each half of the stick, and tilt them into two angry eyebrow slashes, drawn down in the middle. And then he vigorously shakes his head.
No. NO, he is NOT one of the scary fake people of this world. He is one of the scary fake people of another world, and he is far, far superior, and if he has to resort to do it yourself emoticons to say this, then fine.
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--alright--
--the comical expression of anger thus created on the nightmarish bone-creature's 'face'.
His lips twitch behind the parka's concealing ruffs.
"You needn't make that face at me," is what he says aloud. "I am having to proceed by a process of yes-and-no elimination, here. Your current limbs are not wearing one of the bracelets. I've been here nearly a year and have yet to see any individuals made of bone appearing via the tablets. It was a reasonable question.
"That said, I intended no offence by it, and if I have given such then I apologise."
Briefly-- very briefly-- Jason considers attempting to form another connection with the creature, because this is really a very unwieldy way to communicate, but he has no desire to expose his psyche to that vast, stagnant, lifeless expanse again. Pass.
"Are such... entities... as yourself... common, in your home reality?"
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His false head unfurls into a cluster of fine, rippling spines, and he carefully whiffs the sticks on with the snowshoes. Then he fists his head together again and shakes it from side to side. No. Not common at all.
He hangs his head, whole body sagging with a soft grind of bone on bone. Being unique is not a thing he likes to think on. It is lonely.
But there are more important things to worry on. He straightens and regained his forward motion. Paul wants to go to the mountain, and there are wolves, so he will carry him and guard against other monsters.
Come to think of out - he points forward with his head, then splays it out in a tilted hand-like gesture, tryingto indicate a question.
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Jason doesn't do compassion well so he merely nods at this confession. As for the question... it's debatable if he actually understands quite what Metody is asking. Their direction? Their purpose?
"I think the mountain may hold some sort of answers, or the source of this ungodly weather. If nothing else we may be able to gather some sort of information."
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He considers that, then nods. It makes sense. Mountains are where bad things come from, after all. And there might be some kind of cold-howling monster there.
He gently nudges Jason with his head. He has no particular question in mind, but perhaps it'll spur the man to say more.
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"This cold doesn't make your-- structure-- brittle?" he asks curiously. "If it gets much colder than this, steel itself becomes easy to shatter. Perhaps the nature of your power protects you."
He examines the 'joints' but of course they do not follow any rule of mundane biology. No sinews hold the thing together. It simply moves. He has known necromancers who could make bones dance with the semblance of life, but this all speaks of a power far beyond theirs. And the ease and speed with which the entity reshapes itself...
"I am very old," Jason says to the entity, words falling soft in the absolute snowy silence, "but I've never seen anything quite like you."
The ludicrousness of his claim to age in the face of what he had sensed strikes him a moment later, and he laughs, despite himself, despite the chill that tries to ravage his throat.
"--very old for a man, at any rate. As other things reckon it, I'm no doubt another ephemeral flash. Everything is relative.
"I wonder how old this city is."
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If he falls, Jason is going to be surrounded by those. A happy thought.
Metody's head ripples, then hangs down again. Yes. They already discussed this. There's only him.
- technically, there are others within his category. They can't technically be termed his fellows because one of their points of similarity is that they are like nothing else. Another is that they are exceedingly rare - only one or two born a generation - and a third is that, in the unlikely event of two of them meeting, an almighty fight inevitably breaks out.
So he is alone. And in a city like this, he is absolutely unique. Hooray. What joy it is to be special.
His head lifts at Jason's musing. He has considered that as well, and has actually come up with an approach that might be helpful, but he hasn't had the time to experiment and -
- and - and he can't exactly say that to Jason. And how the heck does he mime it? Frustrated, he taps the man's wrist, where his bracelet is hidden under his insulating layers.
There. You can find out there. Sort of, maybe, kind of, possibly. There!
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He is distracted from a thorough imagining of exactly how irritating and painful it will be to be impaled by splinters of oversized bone by the entity tapping at his wrist.
--no, not his wrist, the damned bracelet-tablet thing. Jason frowns, not so much for his mount as for the bracelet in general. He moves to tug up his sleeve before remembering that is probably an awful idea at the moment.
"--I barely manage the damned thing even when my fingers aren't in three layers of gloving," he says wryly. "Technology is not my strong suit. Are you suggesting we might be able to better communicate using it?"
His head snaps up after saying that, eyes scanning the white landscape behind his snow-goggles. He thought he'd registered movement out there in the snow.
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The motion startles him. His head goes limp, hanging down like a discarded mop, and he turns his attention outwards.
What was that movement, there, over there? Did something in the white on white tense and gather, as if making ominous, pouncing plans?
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Wolves pad through the snow, white and silent, spreading out under the half-buried trees to circle the two strange travelers that come near their mistress's mountain.
Jason cannot see them, but all the same, he settles a gloved hand on his sword's hilt.
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If he were alone, he might flee. He can't do that with Jason riding on his back; Jason is rather more vulnerable than he is, and there is too high a chance of the wolves attacking while he runs - and goodness help them if he trips. He might try bullying his way through the wolves, too, but again - Jason. Metody can survive being shattered. Jason probably can't.
And that leaves fighting.
He can't groan, but he wishes he could.
Things move under Jason, grinding against the inside of the skull he sits upon. Metody's legs shift, sweeping back and to the sides so that Metody can open his mouth and release the smaller creatures he'd been keeping inside his head. They sprawl over the snow, octopus-like collections of delicate spines radiating from a complicated little pelvis, and then go writhing towards the wolves.
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Jason watches in something like morbid fascination. It's a handy, skin-crawling sort of trick.
"--if we can get to barer ground," he says after a few seconds of watching the white spider-like things skitter off into the snow, "I can stand on my own feet; it's merely this snow which makes it to deep for me to effectively fight. There are rock outcroppings ahead."
The wolves, meanwhile, are snapping and snarling at the first bone things to come within reach.
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The forward bits of Metody leap directly at the wolves, aiming straight for those snapping mouths. Those that land go for the teeth and eyesockets, grabbing for them with no regard to what flesh may be intervening, and wrenching out the bone beneath.
As for steed Metody, he is going to delicately skirt around the wolves, heading for the outcropping. And he is also going to try not to vomit, and never mind the lack of a stomach or any other related organs.
Flesh. Flesh, oh, my gosh, there is flesh on all kinds of bits of him, and it is disgusting and wet and - oh, why doesn't he have the right bits to throw up? He'd feel so much better.
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Jason leans to the side even if the balance of riding this thing is nothing exactly like a horse. When near enough, he slings himself off, landing more-or-less on his feet on the rock, in only a few inches of snow rather than five deep feet of it.
He turns around probing with his feet for where it is and isn't safe to step, and to get the hill as it keeps rising at his back. The sword comes out and he stares at the extremely odd combat playing out before him with the wolves and the bone-things.
Well, there's one more for the nightmares, at least.
Not a whole lot of time for anything fancy. On the other hand, unless the wolves do come to him, there is little he can do to attack them without expending far more energy thane he thinks the situation merits.
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It goes unpleasantly for the wolves.
Some of the wolves, at least. Two escape, and circle towards Jason and his steed, which has gone still as death; right now, Metody is busy a short distance away.
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"Cha! Over here, yes, I smell of warm meat, come here you overgrown dogs," Jason calls with a shrill whistle between his teeth. The canine ears perk; the wolves pad across the snow like gray blurs (behind them on the snow a carnage of very strange combat indeed, between the rest of this bit of the pack, and their very bones).
Jason really wishes he had a spear, or even a longsword rather than this ridiculous jewel-studded thing, but needs must...
He side-steps the first lunge of cruel teeth and jaws, and jams the sword up into the gray heaving ribs. It sinks in, dotting the rock and snow beneath with crimson blood.
He's fought wolves before; normal wolves may be cowed, but these creatures with their eyes crackling with blue ice and frost ghosting from their muzzles are another thing entirely. He's fought demonic hounds too, but usually... well, usually, he lets Etrigan handle that.
The momentum of the wolf's lunge drags the sword free of his grip even as the wolf stumbles past him with the blade buried deep in its side. Weaponless, he has the second wolf to deal with, and Jason Blood, for all his experience, is still only a man.
The shaggy beast bears him down to the rock and the snow with bruising impact. He's fought wolves before, yes, in forests on three continents-- he shoves his forearm up and into the massive jaws before they can rip his throat out like so much tissue paper.
Even through the layers and layers of cloth he feels the long teeth pierce his flesh. The wolf is far stronger. Jason grits his teeth and takes the pain, which is hot as nothing else is currently hot, and focuses, summoning energy to his will, heat to his will. Heat and life, like that currently soaking into the inner layers of his sleeve and further goading the wolf's hunger.
Life is in the blood, and blood is a catalyst for so much of his magic-- winds it red way through his castings, binds and summons, calls and wards---
His free hand fumbles on the snow, for the patch of snow marked crimson by the first wolf's blood. His gloved fingers grab up a desperate handful of it and jam it into the wolf's azure eyes.
"τυφλός! κουφός! ἐκφεύγω!" he shouts, words cracking like whips in the frozen air, even as the wolf's claws start rending holes in his layers of warm, life-sustaining clothing.
The beast snarls as its five senses are abruptly stripped from it, releasing his arm to stumble backwards in the snow.
"If you are done over there," Jason calls to his odd, odd ally, "some assistance here would not be rejected--"
Unsure of whether the bone-things can even hear him or not right now, he scrambles painfully to his feet, preparing for a next attack if he must, hissing words beneath his breath.
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(And somewhere far away, beside the bridge, limbs shatter and drop off of the left behind tower of Metody, and shatter again when they hit the snow. That part of her stirs, briefly poking through the shards, then settles again, waiting for wolves.)
- she stretches and arches, ripping herself free of the wolves, and then buzzes, shaking rapidly to shed the clinging flecks of flesh and blood. She trots towards Jason, and if he is very lucky, he will glance away at the approaching sword wounded wolf in the moment when she cracks open the brain cases and ejects the scrambled contents.
Well. So she can throw when she really needs to. She doesn't feel any better, though, especially since the bleeding wolf is circling around her steed-bulk to get at Jason, and - and - and that makes her really mad, really mad, honestly mad and not scared or sick or close to crying, really truly mad, really -
All of Metody leaps at once, the new claimed wolves and the steed self too, exploding into teeth and converging on the wolf. Screw the bones, she'll just blend this one instead.
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He gets to see it-- he wrinkles his nose for the pink-yellow-gray effluvia that gets hurled wetly out onto the snow, stinking in the cold air--
The wolf is still coming. Jason thinks of spells but the only words that come to mind are Gone, gone...
Does he have time to finish the chant? He calculates that in the frozen time of a crisis, parts his mouth to speak but--
--it proves unnecessary. Bones lunge and snap together like the Red Sea closing, a thousand bleached, sharp shards coming together and then doing an impressive imitation of a wood chipper.
Everything gets spattered. The snow is... sprayed... with bits too small to accurately describe as chunks. Jason at least snaps his eyes and mouth shut before the first particles of meat hit.
Plip-plip-plip is the sound of hundreds of wet, organic bits raining down on the snow.
He opens his eyes several seconds later.
"....thank you, I suppose."
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Metody just stands there a moment, clicking and scraping as she twitches. She doesn't have the right parts to cry but she wants t- does she have anything left to throw up? Oh. No. No, thats all gone.
She wants her mom.
Instead, she's got Jason. She tilts towards him, teeth folding in, and presses against his leg, boney and angular and trembling.
That was horrible. That was way more horrible than the deer - those were easy and fast, once the stalking stage was over, just a quick twist off the vertebrate. There weren't any....bits.
No spray, either. Oh, dear. Poor Jason.
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Right.
Jason wipes at the tiny bit of his face that is quasi-exposed before any of the steaming, stinking gunk on his face can start to freeze to his skin. Because it's the sort of thing he does, he mentally catalogs whether or not this has ever happened to him before.
Drenched in blood? Yes. Many times. Brain meat: only once that he can recall (the less said about what happens when a zombie vomits, the better). Having an entire lupine corpse explode over him, everything from liver to sinews? He thinks that's a new one, but then again, his memory is missing a few decades.
No. If he'd ever been splattered head to toe with the pureed bits of organs, hide, fur, and flesh, he is almost certain that it's a memory Etrigan would want him to keep. So, probably, this is simply a new experience.
The stench is intense; Jason feels distantly nauseous but the cold helps. Already some of the... mess... is congealing. His clothes are a lost cause and then some. Also, his arm hurts.
--and the little abattoir of bones-- the not-so-little abattoir of bones-- is trembling against his leg like a frightened animal.
"I don't believe I can say 'there, there' with a straight face," he informs the entity, after several blank seconds of trying to think of an appropriate response.
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Metody slowly looks down at the mess. She has lost a good bit of her substance to the cold and shattering. She reaches down and gathers up the shards of wolf bone, consolidating them into a replacement for one of her limbs.
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He watches the creature absorb bone back into itself. Even he might normally find that a bit disconcerting, but after the last five minutes it's just another thing to numbly observe happening.
Numb. Numb and cold. And he really should get somewhere inside. Yes.
i spy with my little eye
a suiting place for a bloody knave
your faithful steed
(if your lead it heeds)
can join you in yonder cave
Jason's head lifts to scan the nearby snow at Etrigan's words. Ah. Yes. There. Etrigan drags his eyes over to the nearly-invisible blackness of a crevice in the black rocks, hidden by a tree's snow-burdened branches.
"...come?" Jason says, not quite an order because he certainly isn't about to try giving commands to something that just Cuisinarted a wolf, but with a bit of nudge to the words since the creature seems rather at a loss, inasmuch as he can tell anything of what it feels.
He crouches to take his sword back from the snow it has toppled into, then starts a slow, stomping-trudge through the snow for the entrance into the rock, glancing to see if his strange ally is following.
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Here and there, her surface is pitted where gore froze to her, then chipped off. It's the very first time she's ever had a problem like that. Poor Jason must be half frozen.
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