Lumiere

Unheroic: The Backwards Castle

"An what's three a'four drops in an ocean-!?" Keepa cackled somewhere behind the group, their voice quickly becoming distant the moment their eyes turned away from the encroaching onslaught. While their footsteps clacked along in their sprint, after a moment, it soon felt like they were headed downhill...and the tilt never stopped. The halls pushed off farther and farther, the cells losing doors and dimensions, becoming blurred figments as if mashed together with oil paints and mache. The torches lost form to the point where they became unable to hold a flame, the hall becoming spotty with darkness.
Kite went limp in Ruby's hold, their arms still having been splayed even while dragged until the ground...no...perception tilted to dump the group off of their feet through the hall, more falling than flying. Screaming past them, hands arched and mouths spilled from misshapen cells until the only reference of their trajectory was the sensation of moving quickly, though 'down' swiftly lost its meaning in the abyss. Soon, even orientation lost meaning and the numb oblivion of the void claimed all senses.

///

Bubbles.
The trail of life leaving lips, symbolized by rippling spherical trickles; the inverse of rain.
Floating up to the sky, they rejoin an ink-black cloud that mars an otherwise tranquil field.
The cloud rains on a tree.
Within the cloud, an ocean roils and sloshes from the turmoil of being drained, but the bubbles continue to slip between the tears of rain.
The ocean is inhabited...

In the distance, the concept of a beast that inhabited the hopeless darkness peered at them. Swimming through the nothing, it may as well be as far away as the sea from the stars...though it was palpably aware of each's perception, even enough to sunder Violet from the throes of her nightmare. All that was left of her was the eyes to behold The Deep. The mass coiled and a glint blinded the crew from a set of six eyes.

///

Then came a click of steel impacting stone, grindingly scraping off flecks that burst into lightless sparks. Burning into perception, the light met the darkness for only a moment enough for the merest of glows to rise up in the shadows.A hiss rose up, akin to a snake which accompanied the 'whoosh' of combusting material being fed air. Movement was difficult at best, limbs barely responding, though other senses soon picked up the crackling of cooking flesh and a fishy smell to accompany it.

"Da'anes-e'da...troi not t'mewve too much. Y'still corporealizin'..." a feminine voice coldly suggested among the backdrop of popping of a fire that dully came into view in a haze. The first, alien sentiment had been expressed much like a greeting, though holding a sinister chirp as if somewhat unfeeling in the welcoming nature that the statement would otherwise intend to imply. The figure, tending to the coals, sat on a rock while prodding the kindling around with a smaller stick.
Over their right shoulder rested a massive sword, their arm angled to hold the haft and guard, giving it occasional spins with the point twirling into the ground...wearing a small hole in the stone floor.

Your arms move much like in a state of sleep-paralysis, slow and sloppy if at all. Perception slowly takes in the stone chamber, far different from the prison in the general makeup being more like bricks than mere cobblestone.
Along the floor where the figure sat on what looked like an old, almost rotted log, a myriad of holes were already worn into the floor in various depths. "Got dinna siszlin', should ya not be so...tilted?" they suggested, the glow of their crimson-amber eyes turning to the party who laid on stone slabs.

The room was circular, seemingly designed to hold eight slabs at equal intervals, though two of them had been smashed over by some apparent struggle, leaving the area slightly to the left of the obvious door a mess of rubble. Above them was a series of metal grates that the smoke from the fire escaped, though still leaving the room pleasantly warm and inviting, especially considering the rising aroma of smoked paprika and garlic powder now lightly crusting the cleaned flesh of six fish being set up on skewers by this newest individual.
"Ah je, once y'stomaches come back t'ya..." they chuckled, reaching into a pack and drawing a piece of firewood , proceeding to plunge their hand into the fire to delicately place it among the rest. They even went so far as to set their sword to the side in order to use a second hand to mingle other blocks of wood around it to keep a vibrant kiln. "Suppose this'n when tha questions come? No, y'not dead, yet...not if'n I can help it. heheh~" they half-heartedly chuckled as if rehearsed, their eyes, vertically cut like a cat's, turned back to the flames which they pulled their steaming hands back from, feathers and all paranormally remaining unburnt. "Troi not t'mewve too much..." they encouraged as the darkness of this new tomb slowly gained definition.

The...woman...appeared lean, though sitting, they were estimated roughly 5'10-6'2, a heavy coat tied around their waist. Black...material...that could easily be assumed to be fur thickly covered their body where the midriff-exposing tank top didn't cover. A long and wide scarf draped around their neck and face up over their implied nose, veiling their mouth...vertical plates of metal and chains blatantly woven into a teal, red and black plaid fabric.
Most pronounced was the curl of two ink-black ram-like horns from the side of their head on either side, capped with curled points of conventional-seeming metal. Not to detract was an amalgam of scars up and down both of their arms that the fur quickly smoothed back in an almost metallic sheen to obscure. This motion rippled up their form to make even their hair spike back as their eyes looked over the crew...presumably sizing them up with keen, animalistic attention to detail.

Hider

What Are You Listening To?

What Are You Listening To?

Unheroic: The Backwards Castle

A visceral and resounding CRACK of calcium meeting its equal as Violet's ball carried her out of the snap of Keepa's jaws. A gentle 'clink' of a material clattered to the ground, a split chunk of tooth from the force the monster had committed to the bite, only to find air in her stead. The face winced, the tooth starting to regrow even as Violet vaulted over them with the aid of her magic; a detail Keepa did not seem wholly prepared for as its spine cracked to endeavor to look up.
Bending with an opening jaw, it fought to hose at least Violet's face before it arched back from its spine violently being folded by the force of the crystal ball. Before it began, the mundane steel of Violet's knife blindly found the inner upper-side of Keepa's mouth, stabbing deep into their assumed skull from the force.

However, what came next was a vivid insidiousness of what nature the substance held.
Violet perceived herself wiping the ooze from her face...

"Nawh then, while shes all hambpahed-" Keepa began before Walker spoke up. Closed mouths curled upwards before one from the darkness of the hall spook, newly emerging, "Oh on the contrary, Walkuh! You ah aaaall a joke to me...and ah find you hilarious~"
Grinning once more, the head turned from its dealing with Violet to Walker while the one that spoke slithered up. "Y-Welcome ta trah that again, but I warn ye...." their mouth curling open even as the voice chirped from the darkness, "I hardly forgive, twice~"

The hall appeared to extend for as long as Ruby dragged Kite who flinched and writhed, hyperventilating until the cloth wiped over his face before being stuffed in a jar. Kite appeared to blink back into reality, taking a deep breath and pursing his lips, splaying his arms. Pausing, he gave Ruby a silent hug.

Larvae emerging from a honeycomb.
The hollow knock of a bird-beak piercing bark.
Rings of a tree expanding to seemingly parallel lines.
A needle slips under a fingernail.

"No! NO, NO, NOOO!" Keepa roars, the heads writhing as four more charge from the darkness, forced to slither slowly along the floor from the darkness

The fetid substance is thick like jelly and smells like rich pine sap. Even inhaling it mellows your mind in makes you think of nothing else other than the idea of being among trees.
"You...humans...." a voice roars from the hollows before the hall spills forth a mess of a few dozen hands and seemingly boneless arms that cling to the mortar to pull the mass of heads into the space. The end-wall, what was only enough to accommodate six cells, had pulled back enough to already triple in distance, though lacking the barred doors that the initial dungeon possessed.
"I WILL find you~!" Keepa aggressively warned, more heads spilling from the darkness to gnash at them as they presumably fled into this new abyss.

Unheroic: The Backwards Castle

Violet's crystal ball, alight with the flare of magical inspiration, sailed squarely into the first head, smashing into its face with a sickening crunch as whatever it was composed of grotesquely buckled from the force. It went limp, slumping to the ground like a wet towel the way the neck deflated to a thick meaty flap save for the remains of the skull.
"Mah! That wuz suh-hertainly rude~!" the other head scolded with a snicker as the flaccid form of the first head began to wriggle and flap as if something was moving inside of it. The chuckles were cut short by a crossbow bolt sticking into its eye. "Wh-" Keepa started before violently trembling and thrashing about in jerky motions before grinding its face against the wall next to the door it emerged from and then slumped to the ground, presumably as a result of the poison taking hold. The multi-jointed arms of Keepa spilled out of the first head's mouth, reaching to grab at Walker before tasting the steel of his sword, neatly relieving the hands from wrists and elbows from arms with his expertly ready flourish. A black ichor spilled from the wounds as they followed the behavior of the head, leaving a trail of the material as it was quickly dragged back into the darkness that now enveloped the hall with enough force to dislodge Violet's crystal ball.

At roughly the same moment Ruby's pistol went off, letting loose a glaring glint of force into the hall...and past it...

What the flare illuminated was a swirling mass of dozens...hundreds...thousands...countless scores of heads much like the ones they'd struck down briefly flashed into existence as the flare sailed past them. Squirming and writhing among and between themselves like a cavernous mass of maggots, swiftly parting to let the shot continue on into their depths. The heads all turned to watch it before being lost in the darkness of their aura once more...and a haunting stillness came over the dungeon as the flare softly faded off into nothingness.

"Nawh...whay'd y'hafta go an do that?" Keepa's voice spoke up from the crumpled head Walker had shot, the mirth and pleasantries they once held, lost to this new tone.

Disappointment.

"Y'all got no mannahs. Don'cha know ya ruin a good joke by shoutin' out tha punchline?" The head inquired, turning to look at the group as the bolt was pulled into the darkness of Keepa's eye-hole. "Buh ifin its a scrappin yer lookin' foh-" they cut off as their jaw dropped and 'coughed' the bolt back in Walker's direction with enough force to more of 'fire' it at him.
Two more heads emerged from the hall, mouths open unthinkably wide, both aiming to take chunks out of Ruby.
A series of hands reached from another cell, grabbing Kite by the ankles and yanking his feet out from under him to begin dragging them. Kite desperately slashed with their quasi-real weapon, severing the arms with a sizzling hiss of what sounded like flames on flesh as the appendages snapped back from the tension, leaving trails of steaming black icor and ash back to the cell.
One of the heads lunging at Ruby dipped low to slither past them, coiling through the group to belch a stream of the fetid substance onto Kite where he laid, now squirming as they feebly tried to shield themselves with their hands. They screamed, a baleful cry of an injured animal, in some kind of unknowable agony from whatever the substance was and whatever it was doing to them.
The head cackled from its success, content with their handling of what appeared to have been a threat before grinning down at Violet, opening its jaws in preparation to strike.

Unheroic: The Backwards Castle

"Walkuh~!" Keepa chirped in amusement after Jericho finished introducing himself. "Well, Texas Ranguh, while you may think flattery will get you anywhere..." they snickered, coiling lower until resting on the floor like a snake lifting itself up almost 9ft off the ground, nearly touching the ceiling. The second head slank across the ceiling from where it emerged from the middle cell, picking up where the first one left off with, "...keep it up; ah may just help ya...pass through~" before joining the first one in the chuckle.

Kite's object was quickly resembling a shortsword by how the addition of more light from Ruby drawing their own torch illuminated more of the room. The cell that the second head emerged from didn't seem so much dark, more cavernous, as if the floor simply fell away past the threshold of the barred gate. Hundreds of small pale hands clung to the bars, seemingly to hold itself up in the abyss. At the same time, long, spider-like appendages arched bonelessly from the first head's massive neck, bracing against the other corner as well as gripping the one they emerged around...effectively blocking escape.

"Nawh...hold on," the first head abruptly ceased snickering to say, the second also falling silent as the first looked over Jericho to watch Ruby make their introductions. "Did...did you just-?" they started, their grin curling at the edges, pulling the expression into a sinister full-faced smirk. "You just saw...me...aaaand your first thought is-" Keepa started, lifting their head and wiggling as they flailed their arms by their head in a mocking manner, raising their tone to poorly mimic Ruby, "-'Oh haaay! Les trah feedin' it! Mehbeh it'll be ahr fraaaand~" before erupting into a low droning 'Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhh' much akin to a guttural belch combined with a tortured moan, their expression even making their eye-holes slightly squint from how wide their mouth opened as they grinned...likely what actually 'laughing' was, for it. "Wha happens next, baby~?" they condescendingly inquired, their mirth blatantly being found in the girl's efforts to...bribe...him?
"Oh! Oh saaay you planned to put a dumb little hat ohn me! Maybe then givin' me a st-huupid nickname...ahn then you...you trah ta riaahd me around, a little~?" Keepa could barely contain their laughter, the other head noisily chattering their teeth between baleful roars and grotesque undulations, bashing its head against the ceiling repeatedly in its maddeningly hysterical fits.

"Aaahh, you adventurers ahr just puh-rescious! Tell-tell yuh what, consider me curious, now...y'know? Sure, ah'll bite. Whatcha got there, Sapphire~?" The first head inquired between hissing chuckles, the second one slithering closer to being over Ruby. "Izzit meat? Oh ah hope ya got meat foh me~" the second head inquired, a growl to their tone as drool dripped from their clenched teeth as they sized up the woman.

Unheroic: The Backwards Castle

Collecting themselves from having relit a torch, which took to the flame with a natural ease of the well-oiled cloth wrapped in a metal cage at the end of a metal pole, Jericho quickly returned light to the room. An almost unnatural oppressiveness to the darkness forced the light to cut out a few feet from the man from Istvargrad, though only back in the direction of the hall from whence then came.
Waiting for them, peeking in from the dimness of the light was a sickly snow-white beaked face, parted like a mouth where an upper and lower grin of a row of unsettlingly human-like teeth rested in a blackness within the face. Two hollow holes much akin to the spots that made up 'eyes' on Kite's mask focused an instinctual dread into Jericho as it slowly inwardly hissed a breath.



"Oh! Wah, howdy~" they pleasantly greeted, turning their head to fully grin at Jericho and the crew. "Mah, this is certainly awkward, I imaging you can sympathize," they sighed, accompanied by a small forced-sounding chuckle that not the less came off offsettingly pleasant. "Ah have just been dyin' t'mee'cha, and well, I get so bashful...lucky me, I still got mah personality~" they once again chirped in a playful 'southern gentleman' accent.
"Now'n, ya'll got me up in a tizzy just wonderin' whacha doin', makin' so much...noise" The head floating from a muscular neck that disappeared far into the dimmest of shadows. "See, we're here, gonna do our best, but it'd be rude of us to just start~" A second, almost Identical voice coyly cooed from the shadows of one of the otherwise untouched cells as a second face flickered into visibility.



"Keepa, we'd prefer ya know me as. Just here ta do what I can for such...enticing...individuals~" The second head snickered as the first held their grin. "C'mon, now, all ya'll got names. Y'humans love tha'kinda thang~"

Kite appeared visibly unnerved, backing up against the wall at the back of the block. The light of the flames from the torch refracted on an object beginning to manifest in his hand. "Nahw, what's that one's problem? Wuzza mattah, Stardust, gotcha own tongue~? Kss-hss-hss-hssss~" they snickered before the weight of the first head's attention turned to Jericho. "So, whadda they caaaalll ya, baby?" it asked as the second head coiled from the cell, propped up on another long muscular neck as it rose above the group to seemingly 'look them over'.
"Now ya'll don't feel so unincluded, we havn' fugotten all yas~" the second head cooed over the rest of the group while the first addressed Jericho.

Unheroic: The Backwards Castle

Kite felt content with himself from the display having even mildly flustered Jericho and his otherwise unflappable demeanor. While he was not entirely sure what Violet's plan was, he wanted to at least be transparent with the man not to underestimate him. Onto the more important questions, Kite chirped a soft "Yes" as they turned to the other wall of cell doors. Approaching the middle one, they raised a hand to merely press their hand where the keyhole would otherwise have been. The low groaning from earlier once more rose up, this time causing Kite to flinch and look over his shoulder back where they came from. Thankfully, nothing awaited as the door to the new reforming figure surged into existence in a similar manner to Jericho.

This time, however, the vermin dispersed over a woman. Kite simply watched as they came to, their eyes never leaving their face.
/ / /
With a blink, Ruby is back in her body, in the cell, making eye-contact with the darkness within the eye-holes of The Stranger's mask.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ruby regained consciousness lying on her back on a cold stone floor. At first, she thought she'd gone blind, but after a brief recall of recent events, decided that was unlikely. She felt for any gaps or sharp edges around her and, having confirmed the floor's safety, rolled prone and felt around for a wall. The first thing she found was metal bars. Her heart sank into her stomach. Am I in prison? She crawled to her feet and slid one foot to the side. Nothing there. Good. She brought in her other foot and shuffled along the perimeter like that until she'd measured the dimensions of her cell. It was just big enough for her to lie down in any direction, and, as she soon discovered, entirely empty.

As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Ruby moved to the cell door and looked out into the hall beyond. There was an object just on the other side. She slowly dipped from angle to angle for light and perspective, and after a few moments' reflection, scrambled back with eyes wide open.

"What the frik-frak on a tic-tac?" she whispered.

Ruby held still and watched the thing. When her eyes eventually found its face, a wave of nausea hit her, and she passed out.

Birds in The Willows

Eyes open. Down is away from the sky.
The sky is blue. Wherever you were before.
A drop of water. Eyes blink away the water. The field is calm.
A large object in the distance. Birds making nests.

The close-up to a microscopic level of the beaks of birds slowly pinching into a fabric.
This fabric is an object that was caught in the tree. The sound of a child laughing as legs are pulled off a bug.
Sticks and strings tangled in branches.
'A kite falls out of a pond' (Appears as an upside-down image of a non-descript body of water which a kite falls into, ran in reverse)
A kite in the breeze. A tree in the distance. A clock ticking.
Two kites flying in the breeze in a cloudless sky. The smell of rain.
A girl is holding a string, her arm outstretched.

A kite / / / flies into / / / the tree.

A girl is holding a string, the string flies a kite. Birds making nests.
One bird rises up from its work, needing to look for more material.
The reflection of a girl flying a kite, seen from an insurmountably massive black mirror making up the pupil of an eye.
A non-descript upside-down perspective of water.

A silhouette of a finned aquatic creature not dissimilar to a whale, seen from so far away it appears small as a minnow.

The field is no longer calm as it has began to rain.
One kite flies in a cloudless sky.
A girl is holding the string.
A string tied around a wrist, its knot, incomprehensible, eliciting a slight headache from paying too much attention to it.
Two hands holding one. The thumbs gently explore the knuckles of a the girl's hand. A clock ticking.

Ruby blinked to find herself back inside the cell, making eye contact with the Stranger standing outside her cell. She crawled up to the bars and pulled herself up on them. "Whoa, was that you? How'd you do that? That was awesome!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Stranger huffed a relieved-sounding sigh as they offered a hand to help them up. They initially remained still, maybe a bit surprised, though the mask would not betray what they, themselves, soon would. "Y-yes! Ehhnf-" beginning to explain before seeming to catch themselves. Lowering their gaze away from the person, they swiftly stepped in, taking one of Ruby's hand and helping her to their feet.

Outside, the rest of the cell doors slid open to the sound of what could be best described as a burlap sack being thrashed around a small room. Thankfully, the auditory oddity would cease just as quickly as it had started. This now, however, left the cell block in a palpable stillness from its absence. No distant drips, jingle of chains or rush of wind whistling through corridor, just hearts and voices in a stone room as if purposely intended to feel oppressively isolating even among others.

"Boo~" a light voice whispered from back in the cell Jericho had been just recently rescued from. Three seconds later, small, snow-white hands reached from between the bars on cells to press around the torches in the room, snuffing it and its contents in darkness.

What Are You Listening To?

What Are You Listening To?