[center][img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/adb01259-53a5-4c37-8dd0-07d9259d9823.png[/img] [b]Alpha.[/b] & [b]Vrog the Accursed[/b][/center] What wood and brick and granite had not been stacked in huge piles across the burned field had been erected into the base of a temple, a gargantuan pagoda already three storeys tall. The fog clenched around it, pouring through its windows as if afraid of what would happen if it were seen, and even the stream it was built over babbled in relative quiet. Its footprint alone was enough to hold a congregation of ten thousand worshippers, and the ceiling of that lowermost floor alone was dozens of meters high. The unseen feasting-spirits crawled across its roofs and grounds and walls, drawn to the grim magic etched into its every brick. [colour=wheat]“So yeah, this is my office,”[/colour] said Chopstick Eyes, flicking her lighter with little satisfaction. Vrog, who had been in the middle of a [color=saddlebrown]“Sure, was made for lunch”[/color], stopped and opened his mouth wide. Almost immediately, it half-closed into a perplexed scowl. His tongue slid out and wound through the air, following the forms of the wall standing before them at a distance. Another joined it, angling as if to trace around a corner, then another, and a few more. They soon snapped back in, the whole head shaking around them. Chopstick’s hair laced out, guiding the blind tongues to the edge of the temple by touch. [color=saddlebrown]”I’m tasting what you’ve got going here’s not bad,”[/color] he scratched the putrid mess between his teeth, [color=saddlebrown]“But gut me, I can’t get a feel of something that big.”[/color] Hooked fingers picked out a waddle of dust bound together by spittle and flicked it off to follow a chewed seed. [color=saddlebrown]“Maybe if I’d got someone who can see-”[/color] a scraping of a hand, [color=saddlebrown]“Hold on, there’s just the guy. You’ve got a call from him, actually.”[/color] No sooner had he finished speaking that something began to stir and stretch inside him, twisting the surface of his armour in misshapen jutting moulds. Chopstick made a visible [colour=wheat][i]“?”[/i][/colour] noise. Vrog barely had the time for a final [color=saddlebrown]“Wait, not like-”[/color] before his mouth was pulled open from inside beyond even its already loose limits. Emerging from his now grotesquely widened throat, four iron-clad clawed hands clutched its edges and pushed out, then down, widening his head in a circle and folding the upper body down under it like a sleeve. In its place, hoisting itself up from somewhere it could not possibly have been earlier, a metallic pillar rose on its evenly spaced arms, surmounted by a visored head. The featureless jagged block swiveled around, four burning eyes lighting up in recognition. [color=#CD2626][b]”Skragh! Good to hear you’ve found a name that rolls out easy. It’s a pain to remember everyone else sometimes.”[/b][/color] The head turned to glance up at the temple and bobbed admiringly. [color=#CD2626][b]”I see you’ve been busy too.”[/b][/color] For a second, Chopstick grinned almost as wide as Vrog had. [colour=wheat]“Narzhak! So good to see you again!”[/colour] Chopstick waited for more words to come out of her, but they didn’t. The grin vanished. She puffed at her cigarette. [colour=wheat]“I… Yeah, I’ve been busy. Met your guy. The little one. Six arms, bad dentist? She needed a ride.”[/colour] She scrubbed the back of her wrist with a spare knuckle, looking twitchily at the piles of as-yet-unused brick and the walls they were meant to be building. [color=#CD2626][b]”That one? I’d been wondering where it’d gotten to. I should’ve thought of giving it some way of reporting back. It’s useless as a scout now.”[/b][/color] The crude armoured torso swayed aside, settling in a more comfortable position over the half-inside-out body. It stopped in place for a moment as a thought hit it. [color=#CD2626][b]”Wait, d’you say ‘she’?”[/b][/color] Narzhak’s head wavered heavily on its quadruple shoulders. [color=#CD2626][b]”Hrm.”[/b][/color] He seemed about to add more, but turned back to look at the temple again instead. [colour=wheat]“If she cute, she a girl,”[/colour] said Chopstick. She picked up a ceramic flake and massaged it in her hands, then pitched it far into the air in a blur of violent motion. A second or two later, a distant click as it fell into place on the pagoda. She grunted. [colour=wheat]“...Tell me straight, Narzhak, did your secretary slip me a roofie? I feel like spit- I mean, like shit- and the tilework ain’t helping.”[/colour] The four hands ran along the fleshy circle they held on to, spinning something below it with a faint churning sound. [color=#CD2626][b]”I’ll check.”[/b][/color] The head’s topmost eyes sank into its mask, molten iron dripping down to seal them from the surface like a curtain. They soon reemerged in a fiery burst, looking as displeased as a pair of embers could. [color=#CD2626][b]”It’s some scrap he got from K’nell or someone. I bet he said it’d be funny. Couldn’t tell you how to get it out, but the best idea he’s got-”[/b][/color] one of the hands let go of its support and pointed a finger at it, [color=#CD2626][b]”-is doing something you like.”[/b][/color] The free hand scratched the gap below the visor’s edge. [color=#CD2626][b]”He’s all yours when he comes back if you get a mind to something, long as he can at least walk when you’re done.”[/b][/color] [colour=wheat]“Fucking dreamboat,”[/colour] said Chopstick Eyes, recognising the taste of the name. She flipped herself fluidly upside down and started doing push-ups with one hand, legs high in the air. [colour=wheat]“I should manage.”[/colour] She threw herself upwise, landing somewhere with an imperceptibly better view of imperceptibly better targets, and drew a throwing knife from her hair. The steel cut a line through the air as straight as a bullet, and embedded itself on a far tree. The unseen blood of an unseen monster rolled down the bark. The gutsplattered earth looked perfectly clean. Chopstick smiled a powerful smile. [colour=wheat]“You’re right, it [i]does[/i] help,”[/colour] she said. She flexed an arm as far as it would go and pulled another knife, a scalpel. [colour=wheat]“Hey Narzhak, what do you think of a little trade?”[/colour] [color=#CD2626][b]”Anytime.”[/b][/color] The free hand stretched out towards the struck tree, fingertips lengthening like freakishly fast growths of metallic grass to scrape the ground around its roots. They rasped around like a mole’s paw for some moments and drew back, most of their length folding into invisibility. Narzhak raised the hand to his eyes, inclined his head to something and leaned on it again, pushing down on the stretched mouth. [color=#CD2626][b]”What’re you after?”[/b][/color] Chopstick had nipped off to a nearby refuse pile and started rummaging again. Chopstick was a master rummager. [colour=wheat]“See, Vrog’s… dry… mouth problems can be solved, I think. At least partially. Because, I’ve been working on a very similar problem very recently. And that might not matter to you, since honestly, I have the feeling mouth boy here might have had it coming. But there are a couple things you have that I’d like to trade for! And maybe other services that I can provide.”[/colour] There was a remarkably large amount of fabric in the pile, for such a rainy place. Two pairs of shoulders rose and fell in a well-timed double shrug. [color=#CD2626][b]”Tell you the truth, I miss having a working mouth to visit. A drink you plug into your throat isn’t the same, you know?”[/b][/color] [colour=wheat]“Could do something about that,”[/colour] said Skraghnaphgh. She pulled out a large silk arrangement and hung it out between her arms. Soaked though it was, it was still clearly recognisable: a torn kite, woven with an ornate eye. She handed Narzhak-Vrog the string. An iron claw took it, the head over it following its thread over to the staring embroidery. Its own eyes dimmed and simmered down to scars of incandescent metal, luridly red like coals from a dead fire. Narzhak held a splayed hand before the kite, waved it slowly from side to side. Then, his hybrid body shuddered and dragged itself out of the kite’s gaze, leaving it to face the temple wall. Its lower half moved in awkward spasming twitches, as though directed from far away with tangled puppet strings; between this and Vrog’s already distorted proportions, it was a miracle that the sauces it still held in a rigidly frozen arm did not spill over. Liv crooned: [colour=olivedrab][i]Upon its magic silk festooned, An oddish kite has odder eyes. It watches us, like yonder moons, For gods in distant skies.[/i][/colour] After a brief contemplation, the god’s true eyes lit up again with a sudden crackle. [color=#CD2626][b]”Easier than sticking more eyes on something. There’s a lot you could do with this. How many’re you offering?”[/b][/color] [colour=wheat]“I’m afraid these are out of stock,”[/colour] said Chopstick Eyes, taking the string of the eye-kite for herself just to make sure it was still working. [colour=wheat]“But you can still get your hands on them. I made them for my staff. They aren’t the sightsiest, see. Or the fightsiest. Which is a problem, but I feel like there’s a win for it in both of us. Scuze-moi...”[/colour] The godlet nipped off under the shade of the giant pagoda, and emerged dragging a corpse under a tarp. [colour=wheat]“Here’s one,”[/colour] she said, and gently lifted the canvas. The curator lifted its head. It was immediately clear what use such a being would have for the eye-kite. It bore for a head a large paper lantern, flickering quite wildly in the rainstorm wind. Its left hand was a little brass screw-vice, its right a thin bamboo cane. It tapped the earth around it with clumsy bewilderment. By the sound of the movement underneath its billowing robe, the rest of it was made of wood. [colour=wheat]“They’re not waterproof yet. Or very agile. Or smart, or… Yeah. They don’t do much,”[/colour] said Chopstick. [colour=wheat]“But they can count! They can count things really well, and remember a lot of stuff. And draw the stuff they remember, and put numbers together. They don’t get tired, either, and nothing hunts them. Except termites. Fucking hate termites.”[/colour] She looked up. [colour=wheat]“I made them to keep track of all my stuff. I figure I’ll be able to move materials around much faster with them crunching the numbers. But I figure they’re gonna need some help, uh… Staying alive to take all those notes.”[/colour] The lantern-headed curator tried to get up, muddying its robes further. Chopstick wrapped it up in the tarp and raised it overhead, jerking her head to the pagoda. [colour=wheat]“Want to wheel that thing inside? Less wet.”[/colour] The two half-bodies totteringly shifted on their uneven feet. [color=#CD2626][b]”Tad hard to walk in something this small,”[/b][/color] Narzhak rumbled, doing his best to keep his weight even on the center, [color=#CD2626][b]”Hold on.”[/b][/color] He pushed the edges of Vrog's mouth closer to his body, leaving his four elbows jutting out far outwards. Their tips swelled as with a sudden tumorous burst under their iron skin, and in seconds the formless bloating resolved itself into one long, thick clawed leg on each arm. Raising himself on his new set of limbs, which stretched well past the crooked asymmetrical paws he had until then been staggering over, Narzhak-Vrog scampered towards the temple's gates like an unusually heavyset spider. No trail of rotting footprints followed him. [color=#CD2626][b]”Big, open place,”[/b][/color] he mused as he went, whether to Chopstick or himself, [color=#CD2626][b]”If they'll be working from here, they're going to need a damn proper lot of watching all day round. Could be almost a thousand, and that's without counting shifts. I can bring that many heads over from my place, but I don't have to tell you what kind of hassle it's going to be.”[/b][/color] His eyes shot up to the dizzying top of an arch as he passed under it. [color=#CD2626][b]”Else I could fly in a bunch of skestral, that'd be a lot easier on the logistics. They act up sometimes, though, you might've noticed, and can't do a lot about termites either.”[/b][/color] The tangle of god-parts stood, slime-filled underside swaying, as Narzhak scratched his head with an uncomfortably twisted arm. [color=#CD2626][b]”Making something new on the spot's not going to be any smoother. Bottom line, the best way is working with what we've already got here. You have any more of your-”[/b][/color] he fumbled for a word, [color=#CD2626][b]”counters? Countants? What're you calling them, anyway?"[/b][/color] [colour=wheat]“Lantern heads,”[/colour] said Chopstick, as they entered the pagoda and the question answered itself. About two hundred man-sized mounds lay on the ground, clothed and unclothed, or in pieces, chalk outlines marking where they were meant to go. Some were awake, and looked dimly up from where they stood or sat tapping their abacus, not fully blind after all. In the center of it all stood a Haze Man: [colour=gray][b]“[].^* !~! *^.[] coffee. .eeffoc”[b][/colour], it intoned. [colour=wheat]“And, don’t worry,”[/colour] said the goddess, tossing a coffee bean at the sentinel. [colour=wheat]“They won’t need much looking after, especially not here. This place is cursed as fuck. But if you want, they could travel with your little winged dudes, or with the ones that’re like Split, the ones that keep buying stuff from my basement. Then they can lend their kites as much as you want, and their numbers, and their maps. They’re guides, after all. Logistics is the one thing they’re kind of good at.”[/colour] She shrugged. [colour=wheat]“But it would be nice if they had, like… a little bit of bite, I guess. Especially if they’re going to hang out with your boys.”[/colour] Choppy clasped her hands together and looked at Narzhak spikily. [colour=wheat]“Pretty please? I can put it in a contract for you, if you want~"[/colour] [color=#CD2626][b]”Slagspit, it's hard enough moving in this thing, and you want me to work?”[/b][/color] the iron head rumbled, with less than genuine irritation. It looked at Choppy, then at the mannequins, then at Choppy again, and finally gave a wheeze like a rusted pipe in mock defeat. [color=#CD2626][b]”...Fine, I'll see what we can do. Never mind contracts, I've got a good memory for things that matter.”[/b][/color] Chopstick swooned. A mass of gloves materialised to hold her up in a dramatic pose. In a few insectile strides, Narzhak's body was over one of the idle wooden figures. Three legs tremblingly balanced the bulk over them as the fourth picked over the dummy's limbs and lantern. [color=#CD2626][b]”Don't lift, don't hit, don't do spit except counting. I can't do much about that, but I don't think I need to…"[/b][/color] a long finger reached into the lantern from the hole at the top, [color=#CD2626][b]”Going to need some raw scrap here. You got a couple knives you can spare?”[/b][/color] Chopstick Eyes flipped a tatami floorboard, revealing a deep, broad square pit packed to the lip with loose blades. [colour=wheat]“God provides!”[/colour] A second later, the tatami crashed down nearby. Coffee looked at it. The blindly grasping iron hand slid over it, lifted it to the four eyes, then threw it back away and reached further into the cutting tangle. A first fistful of blades was rubbed into a thick, smooth-edged ingot, from which a few shavings were let drop into the mannequin’s lantern. Something began to scrape from inside the paper globe with the fury of an [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuXhbsRDkcM]agitated cricket[/url]. Narzhak ran a sharp finger down the wooden body, and the inner scraping followed it. [color=#CD2626][b]”That’s the easy part. These heads better be tougher than they look…"[/b][/color] Chopstick crossed her fingers and hoped Narzhak didn’t notice her glancing away. By the time he looked up from the last of the rigid-limbed subjects, it was growing dark outside, or at least slightly more gloomy than during the daytime. In the deepening shadows of the pagoda, the bobbing lantern heads became steadily less pale as they came into their primordial role. The final dummy was flung sitting upright by a light tap on its back, finding itself paper to mask with its improvised surgeon. [color=#CD2626][b]”If this doesn’t do them something, I don’t know that anything will.”[/b][/color] Narzhak outstretched a waiting hand behind himself. [color=#CD2626][b]”But I’d rather be sure while I’m here. Eye?”[/b][/color] A fumbling and skittering around saw Chopstick emerge from the dark with another ornate kite. There were scratches around her knuckles and forearms, and some loose bricks piled up in odd ways on the ground. Having something to do beyond watch staved off the jitters. [colour=wheat]“Are they going to keep making that shreddy sound?”[/colour] [color=#CD2626][b]”Sometimes. Should help with the termites.”[/b][/color] The hand passed the kite from her to the dummy's vice-limb, which closed around the string with mechanical eagerness. [color=#CD2626][b]”As for bigger things, they've got this...”[/b][/color] The metallic claw suddenly clenched into a fist and struck at the mannequin's chest with the speed of a trained fighter. However, the wooden shape was no longer there to meet it - sometime between the punch's wind-up and its swing, it had leaned sideways with its usual rigidity, avoiding the blow by a hair's breadth. A swipe with another claw followed, and again the dummy leaned back just in time for the jagged fingers to miss it by the narrowest gap. It made a little hop to the side to evade a downward stomp, and suddenly riposted with its thin cane. Had Narzhak's eye not closed with godlike promptness, the bamboo tip would have stabbed it dead in the middle. [color=#CD2626][b]”Looks like they've learned to count the right things. If you know when to move and where to hit, you can get by even if you're slow as wood."[/b][/color] He took a few steps backwards and rubbed his hidden throat. [color=#CD2626][b]”Wish I had a head like that if it wasn't paper. So, for all this, I'll just take the indefinite right to-”[/b][/color] he rattled ahead as if through a speech he had been preparing in his mind, [color=#CD2626][b]”requisition the services of one or several of them, myself or through representatives, free of charge or for a token fee determined by the duration, until-”[/b][/color] he scratched the back of his head, [color=#CD2626][b]”further notice. And something about the mouth here. Sounds good?”[/b][/color] After a moment's reflection, he added [color=#CD2626][b]”Did I get those right?”[/b][/color] [colour=wheat]“Free of charge up to an amount totalling half their current number, the exact individuals making that number subject to reassignment by me or a representative to ensure that this facility remains manned during their excursion, until such time as a number of lantern heads equal to half their current number have perished, entered stasis, deserted, or otherwise become incapable of adequately performing the duties of their order in the course of their service to you; and on further condition that their services do not include aiding, abetting or perpetrating the destruction, desecration, or otherwise malevolent handling of any property or persons employed by Chopstick-Eyed™ enterprises, without prior permission from said enterprises...”[/colour] As she spoke, Chopstick scraped the now-much-emptier pit for spare knives, pulled out a dozen or so and spun them with lazy grace at the lantern head, whose grounded kite had numbered the angle and force of her motion in arcseconds and micronewtons, and dutifully calculated that it could stop nearly every knife by dropping its limbs and falling, puppet-like, into a bundle of wooden limbs on the temple floor, its elbow neatly folded over the better part of its head. After a few seconds it stood, rather shakily, picking razors off its arms without complaint (though perhaps a little indignation). [colour=wheat]“...So don’t kill them too quickly, use them against me, or take them all at once, and we’re golden!”[/colour] Chopstick collected a large scalpel from the lantern head, and touched the back of its blade with her finger, then looked up and stuck her tongue out. [colour=wheat]“You did good! Pretty cheeky, actually. Don’t worry about the mouth thing. I should be able to sort that out quite easily. You’ll just have to have this body sit still-ish for a little while, and... make sure Vrog’s not looking too hard.”[/colour] Grin. [colour=wheat]“I ain’t gonna hurt him. Just gonna leave him a fun little surprise.”[/colour] It took Narzhak a few more seconds to scratch himself into focus and rearrange his eyes, which had drifted a little apart under the barrage of terms and conditions. [color=#CD2626][b]”We’ve got it, then,”[/b][/color] he nodded, curling up the fingers on his legs and letting them slide apart until the joined body rested on its original, lopsided limbs. The elbow-arms continued to smoothly travel up despite having no more length of floor to go over, rising and folding back into blank metallic joints. Left to its own devices, the body tottered on Vrog’s misshapen feet, and only stood precariously still after some careful pushing from the top. [color=#CD2626][b]”I’ll leave it for him to find,”[/b][/color] one of the fiery eyes gave an oblique wink, [color=#CD2626][b]”give you some room to go wild if you feel like it. You’ve got a big margin before he starts feeling anything.”[/b][/color] The original four arms stretched the mouth a little wider as the god's pillar-like body began to descend with a loud scraping. It slowed down a fourth of the way in, trying to crawl back less loudly. [color=#CD2626][b]”Been good seeing you, Skragh,”[/b][/color] the head sank by three short tugs, [color=#CD2626][b]”You need anything else, give me a shout. Just make it loud enough that I hear it from down over.”[/b][/color] Two longer ones. [color=#CD2626][b]”And if you're ever going by the place, it's always open.”[/b][/color] One long grinding pull, and it disappeared into the maw. The arms followed suit, with only the barest hint of nail-sharp fingertips glinting over its edge. [color=#CD2626][b]”When you're done, just push the hands in, should wake him up. Get you around!”[/b][/color] Chopstick saluted the descent of the warlord. Coffee waited to be sure that the foreign god was gone, then turned to its master, who was spinning the scalpel. [colour=wheat]“So long, big guy,”[/colour] the goddess murmured. Then she looked back at the Vrog-body, and grinned. The firelight glinted on the scalpel. [hr] A bag full of fluid hung on a device like a coat rack, thin tubes running down from it and into Chopstick’s upper arm and spine. Gravity fed the elixir into her flesh through a valve. She wore a black strip of thick, discarded fabric tightly wrapped over her mouth, the rough wool disguising how much she had bled into it. Later on she would finish the job more neatly, tidy up the loose ends and make sure she could still live her desired aesthetic, but the operation had proven complicated and for all Narzhak’s assurances she wasn’t sure Vrog wasn’t still in there somewhere, waiting to stir awake and pounce. She wanted to have the satisfaction of being first. Before her lay two wire frames on a craftsman’s desk. One was fixed into a plain yet stylish wooden treasure chest, albeit circular, lockless, and opening via a brass pedal, giving the impression of an abnormally classy garbage can. The other lay loose. In the former lay a flattened hunk of flesh only moving because its divinity superseded its rancid nature; in the latter, a rather nicer bag of teeth, more human and morphous. It was stitched up heavily at one corner. [colour=wheat]“Alright...”[/colour] Chopstick picked up the loose mouth that so resembled her own, placed it on a platter and ferried it carefully over to Vrog’s still silent frame, a spare arm carrying her fluid bags. Vrog’s churning visage had already regrown most of the prototypes she had cut out of him. She couldn’t tell if the biggest wound was still open because his stasis delayed the process, or because his left-hand mouth had been somewhat more permanent than the rest of his features. She didn’t care either. She re-opened the scar and brought the smaller mouth closer. [colour=wheat]“...”[/colour] Chopstick sniffed the air. No, same stench, as always. Nothing to make her feel queasy. [colour=wheat]“...?”[/colour] The wave of nausea came again. [colour=wheat]“Fuck’s sake...”[/colour] Pushing through the gut-deep repulsion and vaguely glad it had not shown itself sooner, Chopstick pushed the donor mouth onto Vrog’s meat and- [colour=wheat]“...!”[/colour] Energy burst over her like a slimy bubble, drenching her brain in a filthy intoxication. Chopstick recoiled, ripping the mouth back with her and hacking, coughing her stitches open under her mask. Coffee was by her side in a twang of coiled metal, dragging her away. She scrabbled on the ground for the mouth. [colour=wheat][i]“...!!”[/i][/colour] A shred of meat had come away with the mouth and was squirming, roiling on the ground with wretched, pitiful life. Chopsticks’ eyes clustered on it. In a sleek instant, Coffee’s foot appeared in its place, and the abortion was stamped into a smudge. Chopstick looked towards Coffee, who looked back with cold, hard light. She looked back to the stain. She coughed. Blood started to soak into her sticks. Her lanternheads noted this well. [colour=gray][b]“/}-_*+ +*_-{\”[/b][/colour] [colour=wheat]“...Shut up,”[/colour] rasped Chopstick Eyes, who could not understand. [colour=wheat]“Get out.”[/colour] Coffee dissolved into powder and shade. She stayed there on the ground, kneeling in the lantern-light, comprehending slowly what had just been done. [colour=wheat]“...Fuck. Fuck. Shit.”[/colour] Work. That might help. In little more than a few busy minutes, the bag’s fluids had drained a little lower, and Vrog’s new mouth had been welded into the chassis of a large pocket-watch, its shiny brass guts lying in neat piles on the workbench. A fresh wound had appeared in Vrog’s face, the meat lining the bottom of the pocket-watch, upon which rested Chopstick’s own. She poured some rat poison down the disembodied maw. Vrog’s surface gave a half-hearted squirm. Good enough. Chopstick flicked Narzhak’s fingers back down Vrog’s throat one by one, and when the last one was gone, she cleared her throat (it didn’t help) and said, [colour=wheat]“Wakey wakey~ you’re a cunt~”[/colour] A faint gurgling rose from deep below the many presumably convergent mouths on the fluid semblance of a face. Slowly, it articulated itself into a groggy [color=saddlebrown]”Are too”[/color] without any of the roughly imitated lips having budged. Only after some more incoherent rumbling did the mouths start to move, one after another, in no particular sequence and without any more of a purpose. Vrog's frame shuddered once, twice, then stretched itself with several cracks and a manifold yawn. The hands froze in midair as they remembered they might have been holding something when last conscious, then gave a wave and finished their ostentatious movement. [color=saddlebrown]”Guts' sake, I hate it when he does-”[/color] the mouth spitting out his greeting to the world stopped when it realised it was not the right one. His hands shot up to his head, feeling their way over what passed for his face. They slowed in wonderment as they rounded the edges of the unfamiliar gaping hole they found, then jumped down over his stomach. [color=saddlebrown]”Sure as spit this one didn't use to be here,”[/color] a tongue emerged from the wound and licked its edges, which were already sprouting the tips of a ring of teeth. [color=saddlebrown]”And I'm gutted or I tasted something inside as it's supposed to. That you been doing it?”[/color] Chopstick scraped up the copper gears in her hands and threw them down the pocket-mouth, followed by a bloody rag. She uncorked the rat poison and held that over the mouth, not pouring, looking at Vrog with eyebrow raised. He made a few more scraping passes with his hooked fingers over his belly, which seemed to have slightly swollen since he had entered the temple, though it might just have been a trick of the failing light. A flickering tongue briefly smelled the liquid, and a claw gave the goddess a thumbs-up. She exhaled, eyesticks flicking up briefly, and tilted the bottle. After a second, she started to shake it, liquid splashing onto and into the watch in messy spatters. [colour=wheat]“You weren’t supposed to enjoy that, but whatever, spit-head.”[/colour] [color=saddlebrown]“Hey, who you calling that?”[/color] Speaking through one mouth was not hindering Vrog from licking the rims of the others in delight. [color=saddlebrown]“I bust my gut letting you talk to your pal down there, and that's what I get?”[/color] For all the plaintiveness of his words, his slurping let on that he was enjoying himself a great deal. [color=saddlebrown]“Good stuff you got, though. You want something I hate, try sweet next time, can't stand it.”[/color] Chopstick unhooked her intravenous drip bag from the stand, pulled down her mask, and bit through the master tube, shoving the sac of glitter-brilliant ichor down the watch. The left side of her mouth was bad stitches and skin grafts, stuck to the fabric by dry blood. The right side twitched. [colour=wheat]“Why the fuck did you feed me that pod, you [i]dingus?[/i]”[/colour] [color=saddlebrown]“Fed you what, scraphead?”[/color] The filthily-armoured abdomen was now clearly swelling, stretching the links between the plates covering it. While nowhere as ostentatiously heavy as it had been before its first explosion, it was steadily making its way towards an air of unhealthy gluttony. [color=saddlebrown]“I said it'd be fun if [i]somebody[/i] ate it. You going to blame me when you stick a nail in your ass next?”[/color] [colour=wheat]“Watching people shove nails in their ass isn’t [i]fun![/i]”[/colour] The sac caught on one of the watch-portal’s teeth and split open, disgorging its sugary nutrients. The god with the chopstick eyes, it seemed, preferred her fluid replacement flavoured with candy floss and unicorn semen. [colour=wheat]“I don’t even [i]have[/i] an [i]ass![/i]”[/colour] [color=saddlebrown]“And you'll never get one with this kinda thinking!”[/color] Vrog jabbed a recurve finger at her, [color=saddlebrown]“Things getting shoved into people are hilariouuuUURGHHH!”[/color] He doubled over, retching, as the taste finally hit him. Something inside him churned and gargled as it tried to vomit the offending flavour, but found nothing concrete to push out. [color=saddlebrown]“Scumspit, you're fast, me and my big mouaAAGHLL!”[/color] A glob of some indescribable, eye-wateringly foul rejection was disgorged on the floor at his feet with a crash. A nearby lantern head clutched its chest as if to say, ‘good heavens’. [color=saddlebrown]“EKHAAGH! I swear this is the spittest I've ever-”[/color] the rest of the sentence was lost in a strangled cacophony of nausea, [color=saddlebrown]“-gutface, got to hand it to you, nobody's ever done made me that slagged while I'm whole. You're near the worst.”[/color] [colour=wheat]“Well don’t dish it up if you can’t take it, then!”[/colour] Chopstick tried to derive pleasure from the decommissioning of her floormats, but wasn’t cruel enough. [colour=wheat]“See, now we’re even.”[/colour] She drummed her fingers on the surface of the desk, then sprayed some industrial lubricant into the disembodied mouth to help wash the liquid down. [colour=wheat]“And at least you know this thing kind of works.”[/colour] [color=saddlebrown]“Sorta.”[/color] Vrog's tongue swept up the drips of vile spittle that rounded his still twitching mouths and distributed them on a shoulder like a hand of paint. [color=saddlebrown]“Think I'll let things settle before I give it a bigger try, though. You'd think I got diabwhatsitname with how I take to sweet spit.”[/color] [colour=wheat]“Weirdo.”[/colour] He flipped a hand, hefting the rusted bong in its palm. A thin thread of steam was still somehow coming out of it. [color=saddlebrown]“Going to lie it out if you're done demonstrating. What's something strong you put in here?”[/color] Chopstick finished tying a knot in her leaking intravenous tube and said, [colour=wheat]“Deep in the Bazaar, there’s a crystal that gives off magic vapours if you take a light to it. If you breathe it you become invulnerable to pain for hours, and also kind of really horny. I tried some and spent the next four days locked in a small box yanking out my own teeth. I’m not gonna sell it to you because I don’t want you to punch a hole in my pagoda.”[/colour] She sighed. [colour=wheat]“But there’s tobacco in the yellow box. Hey, Vrog, before you make off with this-”[/colour] she nudged the watch. [colour=wheat]“-I, uh, there was an accident while I was making it. There was...”[/colour] Tap tap of a bare foot. [colour=wheat]“...I don’t think you should touch it. At least not while I’m touching it too. Probably not at all if you can help it. It’s really… Not stable. It’s got both our blood worked into it, and the two don’t sit together well. There’s some bad magical shit going on there.”[/colour] She snapped it shut and palmed it off to the moderately-carved-up lantern head. [colour=wheat]“These guys probably aren’t strong enough to make it explode. We gods, we have to be careful.”[/colour] The bile-spattered shoulders that had been rolling in a gelatinous shrug stopped short at the mention of explosions. After holding up for a moment during which the head between them evidently reflected on what to do with them, they and the whole upper body slumped down in what would have been a nod for someone with a neck. [color=saddlebrown]“Cause if we wasn’t, we’d be the ones with nails in our asses, got it.”[/color] A long iron finger ran a line around a mouth. [color=saddlebrown]“But if I poked it and threw it at somebody? Akh, nah,”[/color] the whole hand gave a wave, [color=saddlebrown]”Not worth a good mouth.”[/color] [colour=wheat]“Yeah… Don’t,”[/colour] she said, scratching the back of her neck. Heavy, uneven metal-soled steps clanged and thumped their way to the gate. [color=saddlebrown]“So I’ll be starting with that deal you got up.”[/color] The finger snapped in the lantern-light for the bearer of the mouthed watch to follow. [color=saddlebrown]“Gotta figure something better when I’m travelling, but it’ll do now. I’ll be around the food-hole.”[/color] [i]Clang-ka-thump, clang-ka-thump-crack.[/i] Vrog’s limping moved outside down the path. [colour=wheat]“It’s all yours. Enjoy,”[/colour] Chopstick looked at the mats. [colour=wheat]“Nice meeting you.”[/colour] [color=saddlebrown]“Same.”[/color] The steps stopped, and another snap beckoned the lantern-head to follow. The dummy hobbled into the darkness without visible enthusiasm. [color=saddlebrown]“Smell you around.”[/color] The clanking faded into the forest. Chopstick scratched at her arms where the plastic tube entered the skin. She fiddled with it, and looked into the dark corners of the pagoda. She picked up another brick. [hider=Cooking + Surgery = Unplanned parthenogenesis] Down on her spirits because of the swallowed podling, Chopstick shows Vrog the big project she's been working on, a temple-headquarters in the Feasting Forest. He can't appreciate something on that scale without eyes, but, like a suddenly remembered obligation, Narzhak pops out of him to do so instead. The gods catch up on things, Choppy improves her mood with some pleasant knifework, and the temple's staff of lantern-headed, kite-eyed, termite-plagued wooden dummies is introduced. The lantern-heads are good at counting and calculating things and not much else. Narzhak fixes this slightly by making them fightier in exchange for getting to borrow some now and then, along with a way to circumvent Vrog's eating curse, and pops back in. Chopstick gets to work on a stylish prosthetic mouth, with some complications due to the hazardous materials involved, and uses it to punish Vrog for the podling prank. The two then part ways, or at least hang out in different spots. [/hider] [hider=Might] [b][u]Chopstick Eyes[/u][/b] [s]Starting with 13 Might and 8 free points, Chopstick builds herself the Official Pagoda, a Holy Site, in the middle of the jungle for 10 Might.[/s] [b]This expenditure has been postponed until the next turn.[/b] She staffs it with a Holy Order, the Lanternheads, for 2 free points. Another species for me to pull funky linguistic bullshit on! 1 point claimed towards Lanterns. She blesses the Lanternheads with a one-time gift, the Eyekites, for 1 free point. When flown, these eye-shaped kites allow the user to see through their fabric as an extension of their own bodies, with great accuracy. The mouth she collected from Vrog is sealed inside a box which is now a trash can. This is a 1 free point artefact that retains Vrog’s general voraciousness and Orvus’s curse, and is thus extremely good at getting rid of things you don’t want to exist. It is bestowed upon the Lanternheads as a designated paper shredder. The mouth she fashioned from her own is sealed inside a pocket-watch. This is a [s]2 free point[/s] [b]This cost has been paid in native Might on GM advice[/b] artefact that connects an uncursed Chopstick mouth to a detached Vrog throat. So as not to create a new demigod from this fusion, Chopstick warns Vrog not to touch it too much, and he passes it on to a Lanternhead for now. Chopstick claims 1 point towards Cuisine. [b]Chopstick Eyes | Butterwort in Midsummer 3 Might (Native) 2 Might (Age of Lords) Markets | Knives Kites (5/5) Lanterns (3/5) Cuisine (5/5)[/b] [b][u]Narzhak[/u][/b] [u]Starting:[/u] 7 MP, 7 FP 1 FP (enhanced with War portfolio) spent on teaching the lantern heads to use their calculating skills for martial purposes. To paraphrase Dupont, there's a limited number of moves your opponent can make, and working out the best responses to each of them is a matter of computing. 0 MP (discounted from 1) to grant them the title [i]Knife-Eyed[/i]. All that said, it helps to be good at spotting the enemy's vulnerable points at a glance. 1 FP to bless them with resilience against those pesky tropical termites, and anything that doesn't like to cut itself on sharp metal bits when it breaks wooden things. [u]End:[/u] 7 MP, 5 FP [u]Portfolio Progress[/u] [i]Subjugation:[/i] 4/5 [i]Earthquakes:[/i] 5/5 [i]Pestilence:[/i] 1/5 [b][u]Lantern Heads[/u][/b] [b]Lantern Heads Knife-Eyed 1 Prestige[/b] [/hider]