Eyeris

Torn Across the Rift

OKAY!

SO, whoever makes the next post in their scene, please describe the pink emergency rune lights 'warning-there-is-a-breech-in-the-hull' like they were in the Herbert post. They will flash a few times then stop.

There is a lot to read and digest, but, we are shifting into action ^_^ yay!

Let me know if anything is unclear or if you have any questions.

Torn Across the Rift

Herbert
[@jdh97]

The sob of the old man was not unheard, nor was his sorrow unanswered. Light footsteps approached him in the library, a lithe figure sat down beside him and put her small hand on his narrow bony back.

Dzel spoke. “Herbert… It is okay to be sad...”

“... Everything is changing, Herbert.” She said her voice soft. “It is in the nature of everything to change.” She said. “Yet, you can still decide how... I wonder who you will become now that you have a second chance...”

Things around them changed. A pink light rippled across the walls. Magic runes infused into the steel. Warning everyone within of a breech. It pulsed three times… Then… as if short circuiting, fizzled out. Leaving the library lonesome and dark once again.

Torn Across the Rift

Charles, Dimitri, Twain
[@Arty Fox@Affili]

Twain was laughing out loud. Drunkenly speaking with his hands. “She’s just playing hard-to-get. Mark my words… That little spark will be back for more of this!” He gestured with his hands to himself, and stumbled a bit to one side. His sheepish drunken smile widened. And he managed somehow to sit back down at the table.

“A safe word!?” He guffawed. “It’s got to have a nice ring to it! We are exploring the most dangerous of all magics, you know. Something quick, maybe even funny, Pizza? Hm… That won’t work because it should be something you wouldn’t normally say. Like… Banister or… Zucchini boobs… ooooooooor aaaahh….” He giggled between each suggestion…

Then he stopped. Suddenly his smile fell from his face like a bird shot out of the air. He tried to stand quickly, but, was too drunk. He knocked over his chair on his way to the ground. He landed flat on his back, knocking the air from his lungs. It took him a few moments to catch his breath, a supremely shocked look on his face, he coughed every so often.

“Zesiro…” he blinked, looking around for Dimitri and Charles. “Zesiro’s like… ah… I think… Crap… Someone help me up!”

Torn Across the Rift

Rockin, Shannon, Vaughtar, Winston, Zesiro
[@Arty Fox@Fetzen@RokkuHoshi]

Zesiro hung back, crossing his arms and walked to the large glass window that looked out into the dark and open ocean. He watched the wildlife outside as if he were quite bored and had no care for what the otherworlders in the room were doing. Winston would chuckle and write on his clipboard, shaking his head with a smile. Zesiro, every so often, would glance over when shannon spoke, but then turn back to the sea with his usual apathetic expression.

The door to the room opened, and Hirsch stepped in. The others might notice that he had been fully re-equipped. He was wearing an interesting bit of armor, it looked like it had once been old plate armor that had been scrapped and refashioned into something more modern, then crudely painted black. He didn’t say anything upon entering, ignoring the current chit-chat happening within the room, and walked over to the ocean-window, where Zesiro happened to be standing.

Zesiro didn’t look up at first, then rolled his eyes and glanced over at the military man.

“Nice weather we’re having, eh? Ah… Why are you wearing that--?”

As Zesiro spoke, Hirsch had slipped on a metal helmet that matched the armor. There were glass lenses over the eyes, but they had been painted black as well, it obscured his expression completely. Then then he clenched his right hand into a fist…

Then he punched the glass.

The glass cracked.

This glass, made with advanced engineering and magic, should not have been susceptible to any mere mortal’s strength. How did Hirsch do it? Maybe the strange glowing red smoke seeping out of the cracks in the gauntlets was an indication of foul magic at play...

Hirsch pulled his arm back for a second blow on the glass. Zesiro was the closest and grabbed Hirsche with both hands on his shoulder. “What the FUCK man I--”

Hirsch reacted, snaking one his arm around Zesiro’s, then with a sudden jerk, dislocated the boy’s arm from his socket. With a second quick sharp movement, everyone in the room could hear the bone break. Still clutching Zesiro’s broken arm with one hand, Hirsch punched Zesiro in the stomach with the other… Once… Twice… The third time his fist broke through the torso. Red smoke pouring out of the armor now, as if invigorated by the violence it conducted.

He them tossed the crumpled limp body of Zesiro aside as if it were a doll. The blackened lenses of the helmet turned back to the glass wall. He drew back his fist for a second punch… He was trying to break through the glass…

Torn Across the Rift

Wolfe, Natasha, Tristan.
[@cpldingo@Affili]

Tristan nodded toward Wolfe, sympathetically. “That is very helpful, Wolfe. Thank you for such a thorough account...” He brushed back the unruly locks of hair around his left ear.

“And you are correct, Natasha. It does sound like a much different ritual, yet, we should not discount it. We must note both the differences and the similarities.”

“You know Wolfe, I was a military man once.” He stood from his desk now, and approached a small pane of glass on the wall, it glowed soft blue, bubbles and small fish floated freely past. “I was in the navy… I can’t say which navy, of course. I was born without land-legs. I was the only one in my company who was anxious to be docked and granted shore-leave, and relieved once we were back on the open water. I was different than the other men. I didn’t realize how different until… Well… It became obvious... It is inevitable, to become who you are, I think. Someday you will find yourself. Like it or not.” He looked a bit sad. He touched the glass, a little fish followed his finger with its nose as he traced it along the glass.

He motioned to the picture on the table. “After I was discharged from the Navy I was a bit lost. I met Ibrahim and Slay first. Ibrahim was diverted from some quest for enlightenment, I was never sure if Slay was just tagging along for fun or if Slay was the reason for the diversion. They said I was different, like them, and that they wanted to find others like us, find the ‘truth’. We just… Met everyone else along the way. A collection of misfits. Hibiscus was our means to make peace with the dead, Magnus connected us to power and a network we never would have known about, Sooleawa was our soothsayer... and really our heart… We had fun, we faced danger, we helped a lot of people, discovered a lot of truths, banished shadows… Then I developed a vision for something greater than us… I was the only one with a mind for that kind of thing, so, it ruined us really. We parted ways. Ibrahim left to make his coffee fortunes, the others left for their own reasons, or, for their own eternal rest. I remember them, and continue, because I believe in the purpose that they forgot or died for...”

Tristan stopped, catching himself in his drawn out story.

“My apologies, you came here to speak, not to listen to me ramble…” He walked away from the pane of glass. “You must have come to my office for your own reasons. Please, tell me how I can help you.”

There was an awkward silence. The implication being that, Tristian did not summon Wolfe at this time. Perhaps he just forgot… He was known to be a bit forgetful…

Wolfe, while listening to Tristan speak, would begin to feel a bit… different. A sharp itch behind his ear, the smells in the room would become rather vivid (The room was very clean and didn’t have much of a smell on it’s own, maybe a bit of faded bleach. Tristan smelled like salt and seaweed. Natasha smelled like trouble…) Their voices too, would become a bit harsh on his ears, he would slowly feel less and less comfortable, unsettled, a wild energy rising up in him…

If Wolfe tried to answer Tristan. His words would be minced between growling sounds that emanated from his throat, which, felt thickened and constricted now…

Wolfe was changing… The wolf pin on his chest glowing slightly… His body and his muscles felt tight and his stomach felt empty… Hungry…

Torn Across the Rift

XIII and Rozalind [Joint post Eyeris & @Konan375]
[White text is the present]
[Grey text are the strange memories]

Ready?

Rozalind responded to the question with action. Guarding with her burned arm and leading the strike with her good fist. She didn’t expect to land the sucker-punch, XIII would be wiser than that. The punch might give him a jolt through, flint to light the match of action.

~~~

“Indeed… And I can not wait for it…” The man who called himself XVII mused.

There was an argument down the hall. Voices. Something had happened. Their captors were upset.

Some time would pass. And through the little window XIII could see them pass with a long bag… A body bag… The bag was marked with a sharpie XII

“Rest in peace Twelve…” XVII muttered. “... Shame…”

~~~

XIII grinned when Rozalind immediately rushed in. He took a quick step back and just barely got out of reach of the punch. In response, he stepped back in and to her left and threw a light jab at her. “Trying to catch me off guard?”

Rozalind blocked the jab and countered on the other side, but, still hesitated to use her wrapped hand. “I just don’t like to waste time.”

~~~

“So that makes it, what, three dead and four with them?” XIII watched as the body bag went past his cell. “So, what are you going to do when we get out of here?”

XVII chuckled. “When I get out of here, I’m going to hunt down everyone who tried to kill me. I’m going to, of course, kill them.” There was some venom in his voice as he said this… Then took on a more casual note to conclude; “Then I’m going to go home.”

The body bag was dropped, there was a tear, it fell open. There was a face, pale with death, and a swath of curling red hair… In the past, in that time, XIII would have no recognition of the now exposed body, but the present XIII found her likeness close by...

“You could help me.” XVII added. “They are going to be coming soon.”

… The dead body, XII, looked quite like Rozalind...

~~~

… Rozalind, alive and well in this world, full of grit and ire, persisted in her attack.

XIII managed to dodge the strike and continued to throw light jabs at her while staying to her left, and almost infuriatingly staying out of reach of her good arm. He could see her hesitation to strike with her bandaged arm and was trying to get her to use it in a way that wasn’t just blocking jabs.

“There’s a difference between not wasting time and being too hasty.”

~~~

“You don’t even have to ask. I’ll make them pay for this.” XIII stared at the lifeless corpse of the woman that had been imprisoned with them through the window in his door before she got picked up and taken away, and as he watched her, something snapped. He stood up from his spot alongside the wall and faced the door “Say, do you want accomplish that dream a lot sooner than expected?”

~~~

Rozalind became more aggressive, pushing forward with the wrapped hand to break through his guard, but still leading with the good hand. She was shorter than XIII, so, she went for a low blow, kicking out with her leg for his shin. It connected, and XIII hissed in pain taking a few steps back and favoring his left leg.

She advanced forward with a flurry of blows, not giving him time to recover. She finally landed a jab to the jaw that momentarily stunned XIII… Rozalind was in her element now, she was sweet and aggression, she lunged forward to sweep out his leg and take him down to the ground… Her bandaged hand was finally called to action, it was meant to press down on his collarbone to push XIII down in a grapple to the floor, but, the hand landed high... The take-down was still successful… Though the hand gripped XIII’s neck instead…

~~~

“Of course....” The voice on the other side of the wall was intrigued. “You have my attention…”

“Good, because we’re getting out of here, now.” There was a thought that XIII had had a while ago, the cold was stopping him from call upon his inner heat, but did he need to be fully cold to block it out, or partially cold? He clasped his hands together and breathed warmth into them. Once they were warm, XIII focused solely on making them even more warm, soon enough, steam started to come off his hands.

He smiled to himself. Good, they needed to keep him fully cold to stop him. With a grin, he placed his hands on the hinges of the steel door. For a second, the cold nearly stopped him, but he forced himself to continue and started to further increase the heat in his hands. He made short work of the hinges and after a few moments, he managed to melt the hinges. Now the only thing holding the door up was the lock.

But the melted hinges came at a cost. It had taken an immense amount of energy out of XIII, and the steam coming from his hands had turned to smoke at some point. With heaving breaths, XIII fell to his knees. “Heh… that took… a lot… out of me....” He managed to say before he blacked out, collapsing to the floor.

’They are coming…’

In the darkness of XIII’s consciousness there would be the voice of XVII, strange whispers, fragmented memories.

The alarm had sounded. Something was wrong in the prison. Chaos. XIII had melted the hinges and passed out. XVII slung XIII over his shoulder, and left the cell.

’Alas… We shall soon be free…”

XVII slew guards as he passed them with an ancient sword. Where had he gotten that from? Blood lined the hallway as he walked. Yet, there were other things killing the guards and orderlies of Bes. They were strange… Somewhat human… but more like their shadows… XVII avoided these. A guard got close to the two… XVII kicked the guard, sending the man into one of the shadows… It… Consumed him… Slowly… From the inside out… The shadow barely touched the guard because it barely existed… Yet the strong muscular man was stopped in his tracks, and he changed, his eyes became dull, his body stilled… Then…

XVII walked away before the change happened, yet somehow XIII could still see the man vanishing, like a damare. The guard vanished from the inside out… His mind was drained away first, then his pulse, then his blood and bones, then his flesh and his skin…. His breath that was the last to go… And he was gone… Mostly... Something less than his shadow did remain… More like his shade…

Then it began to move… Flitting down the hall and now indistinguishable from the rest… Searching…

”And don’t touch the Shades.”

The next memory was outside the prison, XVII and XIII traversed bright green grass and toward a tree line of a thick wood. XIII looked over his shoulder and saw something which did not make any sense at all.. The Bes base… the ‘shades’ were swarming it, and behind them were billowing black clouds, the thickest of thunderstorms, it seemed to tear up the entire world in it’s wake...

”Beware the pale rider.”

Somewhere behind the shades but just ahead of the storm were two figures. One seemed to be made of darkness itself. She had a large dark bird, a raven or a crow on her shoulder as she walked… Yet, She did not walk, but seemed to float along, her cloak obscuring her feet or even the movement of her legs, dragging a long train behind her. In one hand she held a long silver scythe… You almost couldn’t see her with the black clouds behind her.

The other was mounted on a white horse, her long hair was white as well, and her skin ivory, her robes the color of fresh snow. She seemed to glow in stark contrast to the black clouds behind her.

Though XIII was leagues ahead of them, and the prison of Bes between them, and even that prison disappeared from his sight as they crossed the treeline… He could still see them in his mind… The daymare... He could see the storm behind them literally tearing apart the fabric of the world…

’Her name is Magnolia, she is good, but not good enough… If she catches up to you, don’t tell her who you are… Not your name… Your favorite color... Not anything… She has no power in this place, not unless you give it to her…’

XIII sat in a cold metal chair, his arms were tied behind his back, there was a single light above him, he was bound, the Pale rider was there… Walking around him… Interrogating him… Testing him… “Who are you?” “Where is XVII?” “How did you meet him?” “We know he helped you?” “Do you really suppose you will make it out of here alive?” “Where did you get those scars on your face?” “Didn’t your mother teach you any manners?” “Where is XVII we know that he helped you escape.” “What is that smell? Lilac perhaps?” Sometimes she appeared to be on his right, sometimes on his left, yet she never stopped pacing him, she spoke but her lips never moved. The Pale rider wasn’t looking for answers… She was looking for weakness in his mind… Weakness she could exploit… IF she found that weakness, and got into his mind, she would know everything that she needed to know, and XIII would become a shade...

Stay away from the circle…

This memory was the most disjointed from the rest, but the most clear.

There were three mages. No, there were more than three, but only one was doing anything that mattered.

The outer two were figures in XIII’s vision, blurs, surreal, were they even there?

Perhaps there was only one mage. She was crisp, clear, sharp, she was the only one that mattered. She drew a circle of white light. One mage drew on the ground with pale chalk, one mage painted the stone with blood, they gesticulated and muttered as they went about the circle. She did not stoop nor use such crude materials for her working, she paced the circle. She walked with her hands held out and her head held high. She carved the innermost circle with her mind, for, the mind was the realm she had dominion over.

Despite the advice of XVII… The circle reminded XIII of the cell… The white circle was a door, the Pale Magician had the key, it was just like the cell door of the prison… It only looked different… It was almost like he was glimpsing through the little window of his cell back at Bes and he saw the Pale mage stood outside with the key he so desperately needed, looking down at XIII without even pity.

XIII waited. He had managed to hold out during the interrogation and they got nothing from him. Not even what he could do. To hell with the warning. If the circle was a way out, he was going to take it. He waited until she had finished crafting the inner circle, and when she did, he acted. XIII focused all of his energy into himself and set himself aflame. He bolted towards the circle and as he neared it, he sent out a jet of flame towards the woman and dove at the circle.

~~~

The hand gripped him with an inhuman strength, the bandages fell away, they were clearly unneeded… Perhaps they were just there to cover the grim appearance of the disrupted flesh. Rosalind's face changed, her focused fighting face shifted quickly into a look of surprise, as if she too did not know the strength of her arm, as if it were not a part of her… “Fuck.” She moved her shoulders, as if to parry away… But the hand stayed clenched over XIII’s flesh. She frowned, as if unable to let go, the rest of her body lurched as if trying to pull away from him.

Stars swam in XIII’s vision as he was dazed not only by the punch, but also by the flood of memories that came back after Rozalind landed her jab... He didn’t have much time register them as he fell to the mat. Smirking at Rozalind, XIII reached up and tapped out on her arm, but he knew something was wrong as both the hand around his neck tightened and Rozalind’s eyes lit up in surprise. As quickly as he could, he tucked his chin into his neck and started slamming his hand into the inside of her arm in an attempt to leverage her hand off his neck.

Rozalind cried out as she tried to wring her arm from XIII's neck... She even put a foot on his body to brace herself better and pull away... Finally one of his blows struck a nerve, and the grip loosened. She retracted it immediately and hugged it into her chest with her other arm. She was covered in sweat, she panted. After a few long moments she spoke.

"Forgive me... I didn't realize... I'm sorry..."

Torn Across the Rift

I'm actually putting the final edits on a super big post now.

thanks for hanging in there everyone

And The Gods All Fell [4 Spots Open]

@Eyeris Doing Great! Thanks for asking. How are you?

@Blackmist16 Yeah, it was unfortunate. Anyways, I'd only be willing to try if you don't up and disappear again.

@Lord Zee

I'm good. Also keeping it together haha.

And The Gods All Fell [4 Spots Open]

@Eyeris
I'm fine, graduating but fine and life is moving fast like the sports car it is!

@Lord Zee
I feel you man I was just trying to put it out there. And you tried? Oh that is cool! Bummer it didn't work out though! But maybe we could try it could work.

@Blackmist16

Happy graduation!

Torn Across the Rift

hey guys, guess what day it is, May 18th 2017

that's right, Torn Across the Rift is THREE YEARS OLD


also I'm dying under exams so please excuse me

@Arty Fox

WHAAAAT!?

Wow

Go team!!!

And yes, good luck on your exams!