Posts Tagged WIP

[partim] Mitch.

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When I woke again, it was quiet in my head.  I knew I hadn’t imagined it—I could still feel myself listening.  There was just nothing to hear.  Toby’s bed, at least, was empty; I didn’t know where everyone else might be.

I sat up in bed.  Maybe I could find out?

I tried listening harder—

I started hearing what sounded like patches of white noise.  I couldn’t really tell what that meant or how far away they might be.  I figured I’d have to learn a lot about this ability.

Normal demihumans—at least, so I’m told—can generally reach somewhere around a mile’s radius telepathically, though at that distance it’s kind of like shouting and hearing far-off shouts.  The comfortable range is rather smaller; communicating with your neighbors next door wouldn’t be a problem, assuming you were fortunate enough to have neighbors who were demihumans like yourself.

How far was I reaching? I had no reference point, and I could see I was flying blind.  I got out of bed, got dressed, and thought about where to find people—the house seemed empty.

…of course, that was ridiculous, the house was never really empty.  The body of a forty-foot giant was always in the basement.  And I hadn’t reached him when I’d tried, so either I had no decent range or I was doing something wrong.

I ran down to the basement, sneaking in quietly so as not to disturb Toby’s poor body, and I listened.

What I heard was unmistakably the giant’s mind, a mixture of the large body’s dreams—they break my heart, even now—and the link coming in from his projected body.

I listened harder and I could see Toby’s viewpoint, walking through the supermarket with Rouss. But I knew that was his telepathy, not mine.

I focused on the giant’s mind and took a few steps back.  I held the focus, and went upstairs and outside, still hearing it—and I kept going.

[WIP] Classifieds.

NSFW (M/excitement) below cut…»

[partim] Shotrox.

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Most of us don’t have enough friends to come together and create what we need—so every calends everyone who can comes together to help.

I sat in the circle near the center and focused on my need.  It was the same as always—I needed more time.

I’ve always been afraid, since I was young, of not having enough time—life is short, and even a full sixty years wouldn’t be enough to create all the art I wanted.

So I started wishing for time, to fit more into the day.  The way it works, I see things going slower, and get nearly twice as many hours in the day.  I have to stop for sleep around midday, and I end up eating twice as much, but I can afford it.  I sell a lot of art, and my skill keeps increasing with all the practice.

The magic usually runs out around the middle of the month, though.  We can do a lot, but we’re not omnipotent.  And there’s always more I want to bring into the world, so I keep coming back for more.  Some desires are addictive, and this may be one of them, but I’m not hurting anyone.

The circle of light continued to brighten.  Many come in covering their eyes, but I found inspiration in the illuminated air, and gazed into it as long as I could.

As the threshold of power was crossed, I saw the movements of the other maccans begin to slow.

Ah, sweet time.  I lay back to look up at the sky.

It was absolutely dark, and it wasn’t the rain.

I leapt up immediately, yelling “Nightmare!”, escaping the circle and making a good bit of distance before anyone else had a chance to react.

There was a terrible grinding noise as the darkness penetrated the light.  There wouldn’t be any opportunity to go in and save anyone—it would already be too late.

[partim] Blake.

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I grabbed Blake’s shoulder and hauled myself up on his back, gripping his long neck as he pushed it back against me.

His body was so soft, and so big—and still growing by the moment—I could feel him spreading out, slowly, between my legs.

He took off running, and I held on as tightly as I could as he ran downhill, spreading out his wings, which nearly filled the whole street.

“You’ve done this before?” I said.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

I felt his muscles readying under me and I gripped him tighter as he leaped into the air.  The movement was impressive, but failed to catch air; he landed, carefully, and immediately took off again, with a grunt and a greater effort than before.  This time, we soared.

[partim] Isaac.

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Now I say I had the planet to myself, and that was mostly true.  Far from Martian habitation, there are not many of the nightmares; but they are out there, so there is still some danger.

And danger it was really… determination notwithstanding, I was still at an age vulnerable to their influence.

I still remember very clearly the first time one was on me.  I was only about twelve feet tall at the time, still very young but already too large to fit into the shelter.

I couldn’t move—I just lay across the ground, my head full of darkness, unable to see anything but the gruesome images the nightmare poured into my brain.

They say the nightmares don’t go for the most cherished images—love and home are usually stronger than its corrupting influence.  Instead it goes for the subtle, the day-to-day things that are always all around you but that you barely notice—the ground you walk on, the air you breathe, the clothes on your back, converted into loathsome, fetid, pustulent, ichorous…

I lost consciousness before they got me underground; they said I was lucky to wake again at all.

[partim] Taaq.

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In those days, the world above the water was full of monsters, and all the people had to have either places of refuge or habitation below the water, where the monsters couldn’t go.

I’ve since learned that monsters like these have been known on many worlds.  In ours, we remember them as faceless creatures with fearsome talons, and massive fins by which they could swim through the air—which probably means what you would call wings.

Anyway—the monsters hunted our cubs, and many were either consumed in desolate places, or drowned in the sea attempting to escape.

[partim] Mori.

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It didn’t even take me long to put the formula together—it would have been difficult or impossible for the ancient alchemists, but that was only because of collecting the ingredients; both lunar and terrestrial components were required.

The golem’s locating ability helped me find everything easily in the giant’s laboratory.  From what I could see, most of the supplies were quite stale; whoever had worked here had not been here in a very long time.  Fortunately nothing organic was needed.

The final product glowed with the pearlescence of mixed moonlight and earthlight—slowly growing brighter as the last reaction took place.

I noticed one of the kelvins had appeared and was watching me.  “Does this place belong to you all?” I said.  “I’m sorry I didn’t ask first—my foot got crushed and my golem brought me here to fix it.”

The kelvin’s initial look of sadness deepened to outright desperation.

“Do you need this too?” I said.  “There’s enough to share here…”

I went up to the kelvin, limping carefully, and moved to put my paw on his shoulder—and felt a powerful disinclination as I got closer.

“Let me touch you,” I said.  “I won’t hurt you.  C’mon…”

The kelvin didn’t respond.  I pushed through the resistance till finally my paw closed on his shoulder.  I tried to make it a reassuring touch, but the kelvin’s body was very hot—almost burning to the touch.

[partim] Blake.

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When we left the restaurant it was still raining.  I didn’t have anything damageable on me, so I didn’t bother manifesting an umbrella.

Blake was looking up into the downpour, looking even bigger than before—actually rounding out and looking chubbier by the moment.

“Um, Blake?”

“Hey marten,” he said. “Want to do something impossible?”  He turned to me and grinned, though his face was already changing.  His muzzle lengthened, straightening out into a solid red beak, and he sat back on his haunches, hands on the ground and looking up at me as he continued to grow.

When he was at eye level with me even in his crouched position, he stretched out, his arms growing into slender talons while his hindquarters took on a more feline appearance.

“Stand back,” he said, in a strange rumbling voice and I jumped back as two frankly enormous red wings sprouted from his back fully-formed, and a flick of the tail seemed to complete the transformation, leaving it a leonine shape with a dark red tuft.

“A gryphon?” I said.

“Climb on,” he said.

[partim] Shotrox.

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I saw a good many of the others at a distance as I passed through the forest, but none of them approached me, so I kept my distance as well.  Most of them were people from town anyway, whom I recognized but didn’t know; I didn’t want to make them uncomfortable.

The walk wasn’t as long for me as it would have been for them; it wasn’t long before I entered the small clearing bordered by the ring of stones.

The light brightened as I entered, as it always did, though no-one knew why; by the time everyone got here it’d be nearly too bright to see.

This is where magic happens, when maccans come together, and this is where maccans come together when we need magic to happen.

[partim] Mori.

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I had Munk put me down, and I sat down, examining my foot, while the golem worked to open the book.

The first pages were crammed with text, in characters three inches high that nevertheless through their thickness of stroke appeared to be close and cramped.

Munk flipped past these.

There were astrological diagrams and charts of numbers, which the golem flipped past, drawings of what appeared to be some very unusual mushrooms, which the golem flipped past, something that looked like either a genealogical tree, or a large flowchart, which the golem flipped past—

And then he stopped at the page.  The page—if the golem hadn’t led me to it, I would have doubted, but inscribed at the top of the page, in the book’s plain black ink, was the alchemical symbol for the panacea.