[Game Thread] Chapter 4: Tainted Sands

[Surreal]

As if rousing from a half-slumber, Sul suddenly speaks up from his quiet mumblings... "something is here... in the glass..."

"Friendly?" asks Celestine, going on guard.

"Uncertain... put me down."

With the box back on the surface, Sul transitions directly into the ground, "looking" about for any sign of the creature that he thought he sensed below them.

"Sul?... Sul?... shards! where did he go?" curses Celestine

[zarzak]

Celestine looks towards the other members of the group, shaking his head. "We'll wait until he comes back ... While we wait: Thoughts? It looks to me as if whatever field was suspending those bodies is decaying ... I don't know if that means we are going the right or wrong way, but it does mean we are heading towards something - I'm guessing some sort of epicenter."

[Fil kearney]

What slivver of intellect Sul senses is focused on consuming the preserv ed corpses deep below the surface. Drawing near, the creature is massive, multiheaded, and has bored a hole through the glass type substance for an undeter,mined distance. Sul shdders thinking of the last time they followed a similar situation quite literally in Hell.

Each head pushes against the amber-like material, plucking dead soilders like carrots from a wild garden...

[ChristopherGroves]

Aye Celestine

The shifter shuddered. Clearly this was not an environment in which he relished being ...

Understanding of the things they did here is something I don't possess. Is this a persistent effect, maybe an object perpetuating it? If it is, then we should be able to do something about it. If not and instead its just the result of long-past magic ... I'm not sure how we can reverse it.

[Fil kearney]

As SUl skulked about the encasement, that feeling in him contuned to stir, and then he bdecan to feel very.... sick.
Next he noticed a Cyre soldier that seemed oddly familiar... they all did, as he began lookin about..

Panick was probably the best emotion to describe that feeling... That's when he saw himself too....

[Surreal]

Rass and Celestine trades quick glances, unsure what to do with the sight before them. Their friend hung motionless in the amber beneath them. Twice. It was a terrible mirror, a broken soul staring into the eyes of it's own decayed body. For a moment time seemed to slow to a crawl until Rockfoot interrupted...

"Eh? What are you fellows looking at?" The stony giant remained blissfully ignorant, having yet to meet his ghostly comrade, and from him rather high vantage point could not quite see into the glass below him. Before they could answer, Rass and Celestine both suddenly collapsed to the ground, clasping their hands over their heads seemingly in pain.

"What?! are we under attack? what manner of sorcery is..." then he too felt it. A small sound like the tink of a wineglass, stemming from the back of his skull. Very rapidly the sound engulfed his entire head, resonating until it was no longer sound. It felt as if it were pure force, threatening to make his mind burst at the seams. He could no longer feel his hands and feet, he could no longer tell if he was standing. There was no pain, there was no light, there was no darkness... but it was unbearable.

He felt his breath leak out in one last gasp, and he felt his heart beat. With it came a new surge, this time seemingly of raw emotion. There was love and hate and so much fear. The resonance now, a flood of fragmented memory. There was war, there was a girl in a window, the undead slaughtering your comrades, the smell of fresh bread, an explosion that tore the sky asunder, fear, a baby on his lap, an unknown face in a mirror pulling a knife across its neck, again and again, a hundred different faces until, finally, a familiar one. The same eyes as the baby. But that face now began to shrivel, to rot away, falling to dust and blowing away.

He felt his heart beat... the same beat. Did time pass at all? The memory was already fading from his comprehension, but an involuntary shudder traced down his rocky spine. He felt as if he had just lived and died a hundred lifetimes, and he felt so much smaller than before.

Celestine and Rass picked themselves up from the ground; they seemed to be worse off than he. They were both focused on a new figure in front of him though. Where did he come from? Clad all in gray and kneeling half sprawled on the ground, he looked as if he might blow away in the wind. He seemed almost translucent. Was he their attacker? Rockfoot staggered forward one step with his weapon in hand until Celestine raised a hand to stop him.

"What in the shards just happened?"

[ChristopherGroves]

Celestine took quick stock of his comrades ... the shifter was looking at him, eyebrow raised.

[zarzak]

"Well ..." Celestine looks to the two new companions, and tries to explain ...

---

OOC:

Roll
Knowledge: The Planes = 32

[Surreal]

As Celestine continues...

... that man you see before us is Sul. He was been traveling with us for quite some time, though he prefers to remain unseen most of the time. He has the ability to... affect minds so to speak, and has been aiding us in our quest.

"You call that aiding?" retorts Rockfoot, referring to the mental blast that knocked them all nearly unconscious just moments earlier.

"I was getting to that. You see, Sul suffers from a rather unfortunate 'condition', namely... well, he died - in this land - many years ago."

"He died? But do not departed souls either ascend or descend to the heaven and hells?"

"Normally, yes. Something beyond our comprehension has trapped him to this plane however. I would initially suspect it has something to do with this land itself, but so many died in the war, and we have not encountered others like him before..." as Celestine staggers gingerly forward and places a comforting hand on Sul's shoulder, who seems unresponsive, his gaze unfocused.

"But what of that... 'scream' that we all just heard?" asks Rass, just as confused as Rockfoot.

"What did it feel like?" asks Celestine in a rhetorical manner, almost as if their response should answer their own question.

Rockfoot and Rass exchanged looks, looking for words to describe...
"it felt like..."
"anguish..."
"and sadness..."
"I felt the fear... and stench of death..."
"as if I watched a man's life flash before my eyes, though now I cannot remember it"
"argh, but it all happened so fast... how long were we out?"

"My best guess, perhaps a second or two."

"A mere second? But it felt like eternity."

"As I said, Sul here has some 'unique' abilities, though I am afraid this recent event has left him quite traumatized"

"Seems he took that scream much worse than we did."

"What? No, you misunderstood. He was the source of it."

"But... how? why?"

"When I said that he died 'in this land', I was being quite precise."

Rass scampered closer nearly on fours and peered into the ground, then back up at Sul... "ye gods..."

Celestine nods solemnly. "Yes, seeing one's own visage... I can't imagine what he's going through..."

"No, I mean yes, I mean..." stammers Rass, "...is he, the body... is it moving down there?"

[zarzak]

"What?" Celestine's voice hardens, as he bends down to peer through the glass ... "It ... might be ... At least ... something is ..."

Celestine looks up towards the group, concerned. "I think now might be a good time to fly .... Or am I the only one here who can?" The druid's angelic wings outstretch.

[Fil kearney]

Rass, Rockfoot, Gwynn all look down through the lassy tarmack,following celestine's observation-- some sort of massive worm like a parasite in the skin weaving from corpse to corpse, grazing on the encased meat, "Is that gonna be bad for Sul if his body gets eaten?" Rass asked, more rhetorically than inquisitive.
"Might finally let him move on." Rock replies, peering down
Gwynn glances over to the manifested ally, "Sul...?"

Thry all peer beneath the surface together apprehensively

[Surreal]

"Whoa, lookout! It's coming up!" Shouts Rass as Sul's body within the ember begins to move. The others jump a few steps back and assume defensive postures... but nothing happens. "Er, it was coming up..."

As they all peered back down, they notice that it isn't Sul's body that's moving, but rather the dark tendrils around him that clung like tattered remnants of clothing. Slowly they coalesced, and it was as if another body... another ghost?... arose from the corpse. This new shade slowly ascended from the ground, and the group backed away, unsure what to do. The shade moved towards Sul, hesitantly, as if unsure of itself. Rockfoot simply looked on, perhaps the most lost of all of them. Gwynn seemed to want to intervene, but Celestine held him back with a quite "wait..."

Sul, who had been mostly catatonic until now, looked at the shade who was still partially in the ground, floating at head level. After a few moments, the shade's form once again began to shift, it's edges becoming more defined, and it's face began to take form until it began to bear a resemblance to Sul, except perhaps younger. The shade then touched it's forehead to Sul's and it's form fell apart, the tendrils of dark seeping out of the ground and absorbing into Sul's body. At that, Sul fell unconscious.

Everyone looked at Celestine for explanation, but he could only shrug his shoulders, for he was just as lost as they were.

Rass, as usual, broke the silence. Okay... we still don't know what happened up here, but at least Sul is alive (um, sortof). But we still haven't figured out what to do about that thing down there with, uh, his body"

[Fil kearney]

the foggy glass shifts with the light of ... day. ish..

it seems to not notice, or just not care-- that team is debating its fate. Boring through the odd material, the aberration plucks another corpse like an apple from a tree.

[zarzak]

Celestine looks at the ... thing ... down below, shaking his head. "We move. We'll take Sul with us. He hasn't needed his body before ... I'm sure he won't need it now. Come on." Celestine gestures urgently in the direction they had been heading, which he was almost certain was the right one now. The others look to themselves and nod - following Celestine away from that eerie spot ...

[Fil kearney]

As the group continues to walk onward, the heavy thumps of Rok's footfalls resonated more greatly... Rass voiced concern after several miles as the glass sounded like a gong being beat rhythmically-- until the rigid material splintered under him!
beating his wingss fiercely, the unnatural glass cut ino his feathers as he howled and struggled for a grip as he fell throufh-- the material had been ompletely hollowed out, and the massive giant was causing the surface to shatter like a thin sheet of ice!
"Gaahh!!!?