Mokley

RATTLECHOMP

Aaaaa!!! Mole!!! Good luck and be well, to you and your little one! 💚💚💚💚💚

RATTLECHOMP

@Mole omg congratulations!!!! 💚💚 Praying that all goes exceptionally well and for a happy healthy baby!

RATTLECHOMP

While Sadie is recuperating we can absolutely say she remains quiet out of terror - that in itself ups the stakes. Maybe treat this as a hostage situation where the hostage isn't verbal.

RATTLECHOMP

Her feet took several steps forward towards Echoh and the Rue. She stretched out her open hand and swirled it in front of her. Threads of air began to gather as she made the motion, and with one final gesture, Neomi released the tendril as a small burst of violent wind.

@Mole

Neomi would feel the wind swirling around her, winding and spinning and weaving in separate threads like no normal wind should do. She could feel it in her lungs, breathing for her, tingling like peppermint; her throat and nasal passages opened and she could breathe clearer than she ever had before, her mind sharper and her oxygen-flooded body beginning to ease despite the desperate clamoring danger around her.

The strike of wind caught the little Rue in the face, and with a shriek it tumbled spinning and flapping with four furious wings through the air, smacked into the back of a chair and crumpled, struggling, to the floor of the aisle.

Outside the broken window, the pushing crowd of Rue gnashed and scrabbled long scratches into the side of the dead train. They pressed against the windows, further blocking the light of the cavern behind them, plunging the traincar into deeper darkness.

Echoh, meanwhile, danced with a whirr and clatter of mechanical legs before it reached inside its storage portal and pulled out a shining blue broadsword. The hilt was woven and golden; the blade was etched with indecipherable runes (at least, to Neomi's eyes) and emitted its own pale light. It seemed well-used, slightly notched and scraped, the pommel stained with old blood. The robot pushed the hilt into Neomi's hands while the window smashed again, and again.

CRASH!

In front of Neomi, a shadowy snakelike thing slithered down through the window and increased in size as it landed in the aisle.

Behind her, the little four-winged Rue had recovered and clung to Echoh's leg, gnashing at the copper with four sets of teeth. Beyond that, past the closed door of the traincar, she might hear the frightened voices of the other Howls.

The snake-Rue slithered close, its many-eyed head as big as a crate. It did not appear to have a mouth or arms, but it watched Neomi with bright white eyes while it leaned silently closer to her face.

"Um..." She hesitated and took a shaky breath. Sadie wasn't good at talking with the Rue. It scared the hell out of her that she could hear them, but not see them. She tried again. "What-who do you want to leave? What do they have of yours?"

@Sadie

The revolver rose, pointed now at the shadow’s face, but she couldn’t fire, not with the newcomer standing where she was, in the line of fire. If it attacked, she would fire immediately and risk the miss, but not yet.

But the Rue didn’t attack; it just stood there silently in the eerie way that Rue always did, movements that should have produced some kind of sound producing none at all. A facet of their limited existence in this world, or just of Sasha’s limited ability to perceive them. The newcomer spoke but the words were confusing at first, they made no sense on their own. “Who are you… it is… speaking to you?”

@King Cosmos

Toni moved hastily to join Sasha. "We need to dress her wounds... uh... apply pressure to stop the blee--"

Toni cut herself off. The resurgent stimulation of the Rue within the train had ripped her from her thought. She turned to the back of the car. Someone else that Toni hadn't seen at the station stood, frozen still in the aisle; shadowy mist was amassed behind her. "It's here." Her senses told her that the presence she felt was emanating from where the newcomer was standing. Toni looked at her, fighting to stay composed. "The Rue is in here. I feel it. It's threatening you, isn't it? What does it want?"

@Wayward

Toni might feel another presence nearby, accompanied by the crash of breaking glass in the next car. This one felt like a warm, clammy, almost slimy hand on her cheek, even as the first Rue's presence shivered down her back like frosted metal.

More Rue pressed against the windows, their big eyes staring in, their presence muffled by the runes painted on the side of the train, blocking the light of the Golden Cathedral so that the traincar was flooded with shadowy darkness. Sasha might see the halo of golden light that projected from the silken Rue with the gold-band head, with its sharp fingers at Sadie's throat. It leaned again to Sadie's ear:

The Tree of Arudoon, it echoed in Sadie's head. It was stolen. The Cathedral is sacred.

Behind Toni and Sasha, Yiya groaned and shifted on the floor between the seats. The gashes in her throat bled in long trickles of bright blood, and she pressed a palm against the wounds, gritting her teeth. She could not see nor hear the Rue.

"Echoh..." She clawed at the floor, scraping her fingers for her walking stick just out of reach.

Something thunk, thunk, thunked against the window. A spidering crack appeared in the glass, and the Rue converged upon the spot. A little piece of glass fell out, and a tiny Rue slinked inside the traincar and skittered like a cockroach along the wall while its companions continued barraging the window.

The chill in Toni's back grew burning cold, threatening frostbite with its anger.

In Sadie's head, the voice boomed like a deafening drum while the Rue's fist clenched hard at her throat, leaving her only just enough room to breathe with difficulty: TELL THEM.

Thunk, thunk, thunk went the noise at the breaking window.

There were three, then six little skittering Rue infesting the traincar, their presence crawling along Toni's arms and moving in Sasha's peripheral.

RATTLECHOMP

it is my turn! Posting this weekend. 😈

RATTLECHOMP

@Sadie Oh no!!! Please feel better soon, hope it heals quickly! 💚💚

RATTLECHOMP

Depends on what you all do! I'm following your lead. 😎

RATTLECHOMP

Just to inform everyone here, I've got the Rona. So expect my response to come slowly as I recover

@Wayward

Oh no!!!! Please feel better! Wishing you a quick recovery! 🤒💚

RATTLECHOMP

Neomi looked pleadingly at the other girl and began to run. Her feet felt like lead, but somehow, they still moved quickly after Echoh into the next train car. She didn’t want to dare watch as Toni tried to save Yiya and kept her eyes on the moving terrarium — just as instructed.

@Mole

Echoh crashed through the door to the next traincar, leaving a mangled mass of metal and splintered wood for Neomi to navigate in its wake. The terrarium jostled violently while Echoh's sharp legs scrambled over seats and clattered in the aisle, flickering with the broken red lights that crackled overhead. With every flash of light, more shadows loomed outside the windows, their eyes like hollow caverns.

A crash of glass shattered across the seats far ahead, and the terrarium skidded to a clamoring stop while a billowing gust of sweet-smelling wind roared through the traincar.

Something dark sailed neatly through the jagged remains of the window and landed with a taptaptap on the glass of the terrarium. It was a child-sized four-legged thing that drifted in and out of Neomi's sight, its four long wings striking out and in again. There was a shrieking sound of claws on glass and the robot shook and danced to try to shake it off.

Echoh reached underneath-- and Neomi could now see the trap door on the underside of the robot --pulled out the steaming hot teapot and tossed it at the creature, but the Rue was unaffected and the gusting wind threw scalding tea throughout the traincar.

Slowly, Toni stepped over debris and through a shallow pool of the train driver's blood. She took a smooth, deep breath. "Let her go," she spoke, mostly in stern tone, as though ordering the Rue like a misbehaving child.

@Wayward

Back in the first car, the silken Rue with a head of spinning gold lifted Yiya by her throat with long sharp fingers. Blood had begun to soak the old woman's saree. But at the stern command the gold bands of the creature's head spun to focus on Toni, its jaws sharp and grinning.

The Rue lifted Yiya so that her feet thunked against the top of the seats while the Rue slipped forward along the aisle toward Toni. Toni could feel it, blistering cold, gooseflesh down her arms and prickling the back of her neck, like frozen metal in an ice storm.

Her finger hesitated on the trigger, a sinking feeling in her stomach telling her that her weapon wouldn’t stop this thing. Wouldn’t kill it. Instead she turned away from its torso and pointed the gun at its elbow instead, aiming at the inside bend of its outstretched limb and firing a shot into it.

@King Cosmos

BANG!

The shot rang out through the train and echoed in the shining chamber beyond the windows, where the shadows and apparitions flinched with the thunderous noise. The arm that held Yiya shattered with the impact, the gold-banded Rue collapsed backward and dissipated into the air (only Sadie would hear its unearthly, soul-wrenched scream like a thousand nails on a chalkboard) and Yiya crumpled against the back of a chair and rolled into the seat, unmoving, with a few limbs bent in ways they should not bend. She was breathing, but would not wake.

She rushed ahead and stopped when she saw a group of people, one holding a revolver towards something Sadie couldn't see. Gulping, she looked around and raised a brow. "The hell is going on around here?!"

@Sadie

A thousand hollow eyes stared in through the windows. Beyond the shivering gray shapes, the Golden Cathedral sparkled like the halls of a mansion, glittering with a mockery of bright gold and marble in the shape of stalactites and dripping cavern walls striped with precious metal. The light outside was beckoning, like a flame to moths.

They might hear the scuffle and crash of Echoh and Neomi in the next car.

Sadie alone would hear a hissing, almost electronic voice like steel through a spinning fan, that came from everywhere and nowhere: give it back

Sasha and Toni would see the mist of silky vestments, then the rise of the reappearing spin of golden bands and sharp teeth emerging out of the air behind Sadie's back. Its left arm was gone, but, as she felt a thread of tickling cold in her chest, it leaned close behind Sadie's ear, with the same chopped hissing voice that only she would hear: tell them to leave ... or we stop your heart

RATTLECHOMP

I did several double-takes, absolutely forgot you collabed and thought I hallucinated. 😶‍🌫️ Ok actually working on this for real! 😆