[centre][h2]The Misadventures of Twilight - The Escape[/h2][/centre] [hr] The shoreline of the Kubrajzar desert existed in this odd limbo where water meets earth and nothing happens in terms of life. Sure, there were reefs a swim off the coast and one or two oases further inland, but right here, at the border between the two realms of sea and sand, there was nothing but, well, sea and sand. Twilight approached, and Twilight was grateful. His eyes had been burning all day and could really use a few hours of moonlight. He sucked in a deep breath, smelling that fresh stink of beached seaweed and bird droppings, keeping his joyous gait with one hand on the pommel of [i]Tsukigami-no-Kokoro[/i] and the other resting nearly on the inside of his robe fold. He may have had an appearance of freedom; however, inside, he couldn’t help but feel trapped. The annoying menace behind him kept sternly reminding him of that funny, little word: “mission”. He had hope, though - she seemed the type who would eventually crack if convinced. He exaggerated a yawn, stretching his arms high above his head. [colour=lightpink]”Say, Kesha… What’s dommy Tekret like, actually?”[/colour] he mumbled and gave one of his teeth a suck. [colour=F7BF86]“Not my name,”[/colour] She glared at Twilight for a moment before relenting, [colour=F7BF86]“But, fine. Tekret is uhm, well she doesn’t stop working. Except she’s never working? Honestly it’s a little confusing, but I guess Gods don’t have to move to like, do things?”[/colour] Kesheret looked over to the ocean, and a disfigured mass that had to have been a whale two or three months ago. She pinched her nose cautiously and went on, nasally, [colour=F7BF86]“Anyway she was usually just lounging on a beach. Which was a lot nicer than this one, just saying.”[/colour] [colour=lightpink]”’Course it would be. They never gotta do anything to get what they want. It literally just takes a-”[/colour] [i]Snap![/i] [colour=lightpink]”... And it’s there. I’m honestly surprised she can think of other things to do than just lounge, smoke and drink. Speaking of…”[/colour] He pulled out his pipe and started scraping algal remains out of the bowl. [colour=F7BF86] “What? Speaking of what? Have you noticed you trail off a lot?”[/colour] [colour=lightpink]”That so?”[/colour] Twilight managed to squeeze inbetween huffs and drags through the now-smoking pipe. He held it in for a few paces and then expelled a rapidly expanding gray plume that blew further inland. [colour=lightpink]”Ah, that soothes the nerves. Hey, you wanna try?”[/colour] he asked and offered her the pipe mouthpiece first. [colour=F7BF86]"Hm? Oh, sure,"[/colour] Kesheret grabbed the pipe and did her best to imitate Twilight. Halfway through her third puff she abruptly coughed and sent smoke out through both her nostrils before gasping for air, only to get more of the smoke shed just expelled. It was enough for her throw the pipe at Twilight and, wheezing a bit, blame him, [colour=F7BF86]"What, ack, what the fuck? That's horrible. Soothes the nerves? What the hell are you- Oh. Oh. Oh ok I see it."[/colour] Twilight brushed some smouldering embers off his robe and refilled the now-empty pipe with a meagre smirk. [colour=lightpink]”Mm-hm. Told ya. Best thing about these powers? This grass is but a snap of a finger away.”[/colour] He snapped his fingers to illustrate, and in his palm appeared a fistful of pipeweed. [colour=lightpink]”Toraan’s got buckets of it naturally. This real nice thumbling named Oscar showed me. Ever met a thumbling?”[/colour] [colour=F7BF86]“Neat,”[/colour] Kesheret’s eyes widened as Twilight displayed his powers, before turning her gaze onto her own thumb in confusion, [colour=F7BF86]“And, uhm, uh no. Is that like a talking thumb or?”[/colour] [colour=lightpink]”Nah, more like a human shrunk down to size of a thumb. You following, kehd? They are the best.”[/colour] There came a wash of water, this one different than all the other waves that struck the seaside so lazily. Twilight blinked and listened in. [colour=lightpink]”Did you hear that?”[/colour] [colour=F7BF86]“Yeah.”[/colour] Kesheret looked dreamily at the waves, and the sand, and the desert, and the sky. She exhaled contentedly, [colour=F7BF86]“You can really hear everything out here can’t you. The world’s so... Big.”[/colour] [colour=lightpink]”Yeah… Real, real big. Almost a shame that we aren’t able to explore it uninhibited.”[/colour] He shrugged weakly and gave his pipe another suck. [colour=lightpink]”Life just ain’t fair sometimes.”[/colour] [colour=F7BF86]“Mhm…”[/colour] Kesheret offered in fleeting response. Twilight sighed two smoke plumes through his nostrils and gave the sky a pensive look. He looked back at the ocean again - maybe he could use some sort of magic to track this… Drighina. He tried sampling the air for any smells, only to realise he had no idea what they smelled like. He shifted another glance at Kesheret - her eyes were still fixed to the deserts further inland. He thought to the sound he had heard earlier; he hadn’t been mistaken. Something definitely came ashore. If he could just get her to leave… [colour=lightpink]”Pheeeeew! Feels like we’ve been walking for months, doesn’t it?”[/colour] [colour=F7BF86]”You do make time pass slowly.”[/colour] [colour=lightpink]”That hurts, Kesha.”[/colour] [colour=F7BF86]”Again - not my name. It’s Kesheret - kesh-eh-ret.”[/colour] The woman tensed in annoyance. Twilight rolled his eyes. [colour=lightpink]”Whatever. You’re just bitchy over the fact that you got sent to rein me in, aren’t you?”[/colour] [colour=F7BF86]”You’re making it hard not to be, you know that, right?”[/colour] [colour=lightpink]”Wouldn’t it be awesome if you didn’t have to?”[/colour] Kesheret groaned. [colour=F7BF86]”And again, you are not walking free just like that, got it? By dad-mom, it’s like I’m talking to a wall!”[/colour] Twilight hung his head. [colour=lightpink]”Pfft, ain’t that just a load of-- IS THAT A COOKIE-CUTTER SHARK?!”[/colour] he shouted and pointed at the desert. [colour=F7BF86]”A what?”[/colour] Kesheret mumbled, rubbing at her ears, and turned her gaze for an instant to where he was pointing. When she looked back, Twilight was twenty metres ahead of her, sprinting as though his life depended on it. [colour=F7BF86]”Really?”[/colour] [colour=lightpink]”I WILL NOT BE SHACKLED! I AM FREEEE!”[/colour] Kesheret growled in annoyance and took flight, casually floating above her colleague with studying his panicking strides. [colour=F7BF86]”Y’know, I’m kinda curious, actually. Do you have some kind of… Dislike for you powers or something?”[/colour] [colour=lightpink]”I-- uhuh-uhuh -- I don’t!”[/colour] he forced ought between his panting breaths. Kesheret offered a slow nod and an unconvinced [colour=F7BF86]mm-hm[/colour]. [colour=F7BF86]”You could’ve literally teleported away at any point - are you sure you’re an avatar?”[/colour] Twilight stopped so suddenly Kesheret nearly fell out of the sky trying to readjust her flight path. The vagabond offered his hands a look, then gave one to Kesheret before cracking a face-wide smirk. Kesheret blinked. [colour=F7BF86]”Twiliiiight… Don’t.”[/colour] The vagabond slowly lifted his hands. [colour=F7BF86]”No! Don’t! Bad Twilight!”[/colour] Twilight drew a circle in the empty air, his palms leaving behind a moon-blue trace. Even as Kesheret kicked off to stop him, she couldn’t reach him in time. The man vanished into the rift in space and it closed as Kesheret reached his position. She stood there and stared blankly at the air. [colour=F7BF86]”ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!”[/colour] [hr] Twilight had no idea how long he had been travelling through space and time. His portal spell had been hasty and crude - it flung him between dimensions like rubbish down a rocky hill. Years seemed to fade into nothingness, blowing on the cosmic wind like fine sand. It felt as though the trip took less than a minute, all the while lasting for aeons. Before Twilight truly managed to grasp the nature of the spell, he was gripped by a powerful force and pulled into a black crevice. Cosmic energy turned to moisture; void became hard, hard, oh, so very hard ground; and Twilight rolled all over it and crashed into a thick, firm tree trunk. It took him a moment to recover, his fingers caked in blood from a hundred cuts and bruises from all over his body, all of which were rapidly healing even as he inspected them. Thank the gods he was immortal. He hauled himself to his feet and looked around - he appeared to be in some kind of forest; a very wet and inhospitable forest, at that. The air was closer than the space between grains of sand at the beach, and the canopy hung over his head with oppressive density. Almost as thick as the moisture was the presence of all manner of insects - both aflight and acrawl. His sandals filled with all sorts of beetles and ants, all of which began inspecting the legs of his raggedy pants for snacks; his exposed hands and face were swiftly assaulted by fliers curious to see what divine skin and blood would taste like. The avatar took a deep breath. This was fine. [colour=lightpink]”This is fine,”[/colour] he repeated like a mantra before taking his first step. The hard soil turned to deep mud after a few steps, soaking into the fabric of his pants. [colour=lightpink]”This is fine.”[/colour] A thick, almost stonehard clump of something smelly struck him in the scalp and slowly slid down the side of his face. The avatar brought a quivering hand to his soiled cheek and sampled the substance between his fingers. It was sticky. Reluctantly, he held the fingers up before his eyes. It was a greenish brown. Lastly, with a stone of anxiety in his stomach, he gave it a sniff. It stank to high heavens. With a squeal, the avatar started slapping and wiping himself all over with panicking hands, scraping off filth and smacking bugs. His legs danced through the mud and his messy ponytail whipped at the swarms around him. [colour=lightpink]”GETOFFGETOFFGETOFF!”[/colour] “Halt!” came a nearby voice and Twilight froze. His eyes fixed on a woman standing amidst the trees. She had bark-brown skin, black hair, and a long, animalistic tattoo that snaked its way from her cheeks to her stomach. She wore a wary frown and held an obsidian spear at the ready as she approached. The more Twilight looked, the more woman he saw pop out of the surroundings as though they had been there all along. Ignoring the bug bites and the fact that he was slowly sinking into the mud for a moment, he slowly brought his hand towards the hilt of his sword. The mere movement caused everyone around him to heft their spears higher. “One move and you’re dead, outsider,” snarled the first woman. Twilight snickered, his hips sinking into the mud as well. [colour=lightpink]”Brave of you to carry that tone with me, lady… I see that I may have to reveal my true power level to gain some respect around here. Hehehe.”[/colour] He was up to his chest in mud. The women all seemed to lower their spears in confusion and disbelief for the avatar’s calmness in the situation. “... You… You do realise you’re sinking, do you, outsider?” Calmness wasn’t the right word, perhaps. Twilight’s smirk broadened. [colour=lightpink]”A temporary setback, love.”[/colour] The mud settled neatly around the root of his neck. [colour=lightpink]”Behold - I will be free in the mere blink of an eye! Yes! That’s right - you have the pleasure of meeting no one else but ME! Twilight! Vagabond of the Moon and-- why isn’t my spell working?”[/colour] Under the mud, his fingers were having a hard time snapping - the mud made his fingers slip. [colour=lightpink]”You’re kidding me.”[/colour] The women adopted states of sighing or laughing. The first one rested the bridge of her nose on her index and her thumb. “Alright, that’s about the extent to which I will be patient with your games, outsider… Sisters, pull him up.” [colour=lightpink]”No, wait!”[/colour] Twilight pleaded. [colour=lightpink]”I can still prove my divinity! Wait!”[/colour] “Gag him, please.” [colour=lightpink]”No, wait, I-- erhmph! Hmmph! Ehveveve!”[/colour] It took two of them gag him with a sweaty vine. The avatar growled and fought back as they tried to pull him up. The ones holding him found themselves struggling immensely against his strength, and it took the whole band of them and twenty metres of vines to bind him. Oh, and they had to knock him out, too. In the end, Twilight was dragged face-down along the jungle floor, for miles and miles. He was asleep for most of it, but towards the end, he woke up to realise he had acquired a series of new scars all over from his very being being sanded away by the ground. He was sat up, his eyes still recovering, and given just enough time to take in the sights of a small village at the border of the jungle, situated on a rise overlooking a distant growing city centered around a pyramid in the middle of construction. “Welcome to Zetanze, tributary of the great Zuanwa, outsider.” Twilight blinked. Where in the world had he ended up now?! [hider=SumSum] Twi and Kesha keep chatting. Kesha drops the fact that Twi could’ve escaped at any time. Twi realises this and escapes. Twi being Twi botches the spell and ends up in some jungle some time later. He is fucked hard by the jungle and then taken prisoner by the Amazons of Zuanwa. To be continued. [/hider] [hider=MP Sum] Twilight: 5/5 1MP - Teleport to Zuanwa, possibly timetravelling into the future in the process. I’unno. End: 4MP/5DP [/hider]