Lemons

ᴀᴘᴏᴛʜᴇᴏsɪs: __ɢᴇɴᴇsɪs

Waiting sounds about right to me.

ᴀᴘᴏᴛʜᴇᴏsɪs: __ɢᴇɴᴇsɪs

That feel when you just can't find a good voice, so you default to anime, the only thing you know...

ᴀᴘᴏᴛʜᴇᴏsɪs: __ɢᴇɴᴇsɪs

@Vec Np breh👌

ᴀᴘᴏᴛʜᴇᴏsɪs: __ɢᴇɴᴇsɪs

@Vec

Just a brief note on some inconsistencies: Tori is on her feet, not crawling, but limping heavily, and while she's going towards the stream, she's veering away from the group, not towards.

ᴀᴘᴏᴛʜᴇᴏsɪs: __ɢᴇɴᴇsɪs

Beep boop.

ᴀᴘᴏᴛʜᴇᴏsɪs: __ɢᴇɴᴇsɪs

Tori shivered spasmodically, flicking her lighter uselessly for the umpteenth time since she'd been awoken. She hadn't the faintest idea what was happening. She'd gone to bed, ready to sleep and go to school to next day. Everything had been utterly, splendidly normal, at least as far as normal had ever gone for Tori. Then...a strange in-between blur, not quite awake, not quite asleep. Some kind of light. The familiar feeling of a lighter's flickwheel under her thumb, the hypnotic glow of leaping flames. Pain. Dully gleaming metal, the agonizing sensation of seizing muscles, and blackness. Then light, then darkness again. Sterile fluorescents, the thump of being carried like a sack of potatoes over someone's shoulder. A seemingly-neverending series of broken images blitzing through her skull. Then wakefulness, and above all, cold.

Wherever she was--some kind of train car, she thought--it had seemingly neutralized any of her exceptional talents. Normally this wouldn't be all too frustrating to Tori. She didn't actually use them all that much under normal circumstances, though if she ever got out of whatever this was, that might change. However, she'd not counted on one thing: her body heat. That feverish heat that consumed so many of her calories and gave her so much energy had fled, leaving her running three degrees lower. Not that much, one might think. Three degrees is nothing. Not so; she was beset with a feeling of through-and-through frigidity, shivering into soreness and numbed into barely being able to think. She flicked the lighter again, cupping her hands around the flame and desperately trying to absorb the warmth into her, but to no avail; the cold remained.

At first, she'd thought that the food they gave her would be insufficient; indeed not. Her caloric intake had gone down to match anybody else's, leaving her feeling bloated and unpleasant whenever she ate. She'd barely touched her food, and she could feel it; her stomach had shrunken even further past it's usual state. The food had been stacked meticulously in one corner of her cell. Obsessively arranging and perfecting the organization of the pyramid had been her only activity for the past two days. Beyond that, she'd huddled against one of the cold metal walls, desperately trying to generate some of her old heat and failing utterly. Her eyes bored into the word on the wall opposite her: Apotheosis. She knew that word, but her addled mind couldn't seem to retrieve it from her limp brain.

"So...cold..." she mumbled mindlessly, rendered nearly incomprehensible through her chattering teeth.

Then the lights died, and for a moment, Tori relaxed. I'm dead, aren't I? Took them long enough. The cold stillness pervaded.

Then, in a sudden flash of light behind her eyes, the heat rushed back, and she surged back to life. Her mind raced. Her body suffused with the renewed flow of blood, and for the brief instant before the bone-rattling crunching of metal on metal smashing itself into tin cans, she grinned, clenching her fists and fingering the lighter.

She was totally unprepared for the sound, and for the gravity. She felt the oddest sensation of weightlessness, and in the utter blackness, she once again wondered if this was what it was like to be dead, before the wall rushed sideways to meet her and she ragdolled across her cell, feeling a deep, crunching pain in her right leg. Her teeth clenched together as her lips pulled back into a soundless snarl. If I'm lucky, she thought grimly, that isn't broken. She didn't really have a whole lot of time to think about it before the train car cannoned into a solid object, dashing her against the floor and exploding an array of brilliant colors behind her eyes. She spat blood, and the cell opened up, a huge rift to the outside world appearing next to her.

She tried to stand, but her hurt leg fell out from under her. It probably wasn't broken, didn't hurt enough to be, but it was still plenty painful, and she ended up falling to the ground and settling for a weak crawl out into the broad light of day. Fire swelled up into the gap where spilled fuel had ignited, and she calmed the raging blaze with a weak wave of her hand, sending it shuddering into the ground as she emerged into the sun.

She tried to stand again, and this time, she managed to struggle to her feet. Though she limped heavily, it was still faster and infinitely less degrading than crawling, so she bit her way past the pain and grunted as she felt a half-dozen other minor pains across her body. The worst of them was a slash across her left arm where a jagged shard of metal had bit into it as she crawled out, and though it wasn't bleeding enough to worry about killing her, she still grimaced. I should really get that cleaned up and bandaged.

Casting her eyes about, she set her sights on a stream, and began limping towards it. Before too long, she caught some movement out of the corner of her eye, and saw a girl about her age, maybe a little younger, walking towards the same stream, stride easy, seemingly without any pain. Angling slightly away from her, Tori continued limping. I have no idea who you are, and you better not come any closer, she thought, frowning angrily as she flicked her lighter. I've had enough trouble today.

A Tyrant's Undoing

Avad wasn't sure what it was that awoke him from the half-sleep, half-unconsciousness that he'd been floating in. It couldn't be sound; there was no way to hear, with his eardrums being ripped apart. He wasn't entirely deaf, but very close to it; a noise would have to be either very close or very loud to register. It would take weeks for them to heal. It, of course, couldn't have been sight; he was unconscious. His eyes were obviously closed. It was something less concrete than either of those, something that perhaps Sergei would have shared. It was a finely-honed sense, persisting even through debilitation and/or sleep, that made itself known in those that had fought their way through dozens of battles and lived through even more assassination attempts by enemy armies. A combat sense, if you will, that gave him a vague awareness of being watched, of something around him paying close attention to him. If he was more cogent, that's likely what he would've described it as. Combat sense, if you will.

But that didn't matter anymore. Because he'd awoke. And he was not happy.

The first thing he realized upon opening his bleary eyes was that his ears hurt like the dickens. It wasn't an intense pain that he couldn't think past, but it was nonetheless irritating. The second thing, immediately after, was that he was not, in fact, in a prison. It seemed that he had been slung carelessly underneath some blankets in the back of the wagon, and the only reason he could see at all is because someone had tossed them back. I suppose that makes sense, what with trying to escape an entire kingdom of guards, he groused to himself, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. Shoving the blankets off him totally, he rose, cracking his knuckles and, immediately afterwards, realizing a single, critically important fact: OH GODS. Everything HURTS.

He instantly sat back down with an explosive thud, lying on his back with his arms spread out and trying to mute the pain that seemed to emanate from every joint in his body at once. He groaned. What I would not give for some milk-of-poppy right now. Or liquor. A lot of liquor. Though that probably wasn't a good idea, given how queasy he was feeling. Some detached part of him realized that his symptoms were simply the result of a heavier-than-usual magical overdraw, and that even six years' worth of energy in that stone hadn't been enough to fuel that spell without some of his own. His eyes remained open, looking up at the sky, clear blue and totally cloudless. The leaves of the woods rolled past him, set to the rhythm of the bumping of the cartwheels across the ground, and he found himself sinking into that blue void, leaving himself behind in a kind of meditation. The pain in his body dulled and he inhaled deeply, suddenly appreciative of the clean forest air. It smelled of loam and water.

He'd never been the best at meditation, and before too long, the world came creeping back. The pain remained slightly diminished; he was extraordinarily grateful for that fact. Sitting up, he called out in a dry, rasping voice as loudly as he could, (that is to say, slightly louder than an average person's speaking voice) "Where exactly are we going? Actually, better question: where are we?" He wasn't sure to whom he was asking these questions; ideally it was the merchant, who he belatedly realized he'd never asked the name of, and it had presumably been given during his first overdraw, but he supposed anybody could serve just as well, as long as he got an answer. With that said, he lay back down and continued watching the sky go by.

A Tyrant's Undoing

Just waiting on Vert to check on Avad and wake him up.

ᴀᴘᴏᴛʜᴇᴏsɪs: __ɢᴇɴᴇsɪs

I'm down for that.

ᴀᴘᴏᴛʜᴇᴏsɪs: __ɢᴇɴᴇsɪs

Looking at all these characters as I'm like "damn mine is so short."