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[The Grand Duchy] Echoes of the Verdant Heart

Liu was able to gather that the fight was over from general signs. The feeling was telling, his spatial awareness was another clue from a distance that the situation was resolved. He turned around and sped back to the location where he stowed the child to pick her up to return to that clearing a few moments later. With a quick proffer, he showed the crew that baby and secured it against his torso. It was probably best they return this thing where it belongs. Liu was glad in this moment for a lack of flesh. He could most easily tune out the outside world as it pertains to smell. As long as it has been separated and as long as it has been missing, he chose to not smell and not imagine the odor wafting from the baby's swaddling.

"I do not recall..." he looked toward the pile of rubble to his right. Though the little mounds of splintered wood and furniture were ordered in their placement, he was not planning on finding the book in their chaotically deposited contents. He continued again, "I do not recall the journal informing us of where this little one came from. Are any of you familiar with child care? It was never something I had the... pleasure to participate in," he asked, "I am sure the duchy can take care of locating the baby's parents. Perhaps the kidnapping was done without violence," he wondered aloud.

"Speaking of violence, how did you all finally get rid of the spirit?" he asked idly, holding the baby away from his body carefully, making sure not to hold it the wrong way up or anything overly harmful like that. He began looking over it a little to make sure it wasn't in the process of perishing.

[The Grand Duchy] Echoes of the Verdant Heart

With the spirit momentarily distracted, Liu set the professor down right on his feet and brushed him off ineffectually, informing him that "I will extract the child so you may cut loose without receiving censure," and blazing away once again across the loamy ground recently cleared of debris. Magic protected the fellow creature so Liu felt more secure in speeding away, for the time being. The skeletal form blurred once more and darted right through the center of the encounter, and then out of the edge of the clearing, but not all at the same speed. It was a white streak to the child, which he then picked up gingerly, and at first began to run at an entirely human speed. By the time he was out of the clearing, it was just a little faster than the fastest person, and over the entire trip to the outside of the forest, he crossed carefully into a blur and out of one, avoiding the spiny hazards carefully and scooping up the infant. Rapidly using his [Special Sense: Spatial], he stuck to a manageable range and located a nook of some kind, a den of herbivores or a hollow tree. He avoided tree branches as unfortunately crows have compunction when a vulnerable meal is presented.

Swiftly depositing the child there, he bundled his coat up and laid it on the child, trying to leave space to breathe, just to further muffle the sound and perhaps ward off insects. He stood once more and turned to face the forest, its dark corners and angry trees more intimidating now that he knew what was at stake. After a moment's reprise he moved to dart back to the fight, leaving the child behind him regardless of its response to it all. Children's cries grew unable to reach his heart long before he ever became a monster in form.

1. Fast B moving toward a location designated by:
2. Spatial Sense D
3. Deposit child using that information

Cooldowns:
0/4 B
1/3 C
0/2 D

[The Grand Duchy] Echoes of the Verdant Heart

The baby was not the one in danger just yet.

Liu sprang into action to take the professor out of the destructive attack. Using prodigious speed and adroit control, Liu speed away from his spot and curved around the shifting earth and angry vines to slide in behind the professor from a short jump, hoping his vestibular dexterity would prevent him from tripping, or some other deadly and humiliating error. Aware of the professor's true nature, he reached out mid step and snatched the body in a manner that would serve for either the living or the dead. Aware of the caster's need for the hands, he braced Vaust's coccyx against his hip and gripped the left shoulder, pulling down so that it formed a rigid lever against his solid form. Given Liu's empty body, even a fleshy being would sit on the iliac crest as if gently hooked in. Liu did his best not to crush or bend the professor but he used a firm grip and attempted to shield from attacks using his sturdy frame.

The hope was that the extraction could be completed in the blink of an eye. He sped clockwise rapidly using his prodigious speed, away from the roots and at a right angle from the rest of the group. The hope was to be well out of the way quickly enough to avoid the attack. It was possible that Vaust would be disoriented, being in one place and then being subjected to a blur. It was lucky that the professor didn't have organs to be jostled around, on account of which Liu was not as gentle as he could be.

1. Fast C Move past Vaust.
2. Grab
3. Defend if needed, Natural Armor in play.

Cooldowns:
C [0/3]

[The Grand Duchy] Echoes of the Verdant Heart

"Likely not," he grumbled in reply to Esther. One skeletal hand rose to cradle his forehead and the other pushed his torso up from the floor. With his legs formed it was effortless to stand. He merely regarded the new creature. As a conduit or avatar, it was likely in its most vulnerable state in these first few moments after formation. Yet, it may still be too powerful for them to stop. Unsteadily, shod skeletal feet slid into a more robust stance and he waited for acute danger to coalesce. It would not be long now.

Quietly, he calculated the priorities. Surely a magical baby should be the first one. Liu could not claim to understand what was happening but perhaps it swapped states with Penny in some sense. Indeed the baby should be treated as a high priority, but if this thing were to grow out of control, how many more would be claimed by the cataclysm? Liu could speed the baby to safety, perhaps even to a house, but would the team live without his potential to evacuate them? Furthermore, would these folks save more people than the child here? As with all of the capable, they have equal chance to kill more than they save, that cannot be calculated here. How would he be seen if he, a monster, were to prioritize anything other than the child? Before he moved, he turned his head to the side to indicate that his attention was on Vaust.

[The Grand Duchy] Labyrinth of the Primordial Bloom [FINISHED]

Eventually the light faded and the room developed again from blank, sheer white. Feet were visible from his view underneath the table. He would be unable to describe the 'muscles' he flexed, but his bits rocked back and forth, little phalanges rolling awkwardly then skipping and bouncing. A grunting noise emanated from his skull as it rocked, a little at first, and then further, and he worked his jaw to roll and begin skipping toward his torso. The occult force gently coaxing his bits back into place took this head-start and the relatively heavy skull slid and jostled across the uneven wood floor's ashen grain. A fibula cartwheeled into a pant leg, a disassembled hand spilled onto the ground by his rejoined wrist and that wrist pulled across the ground to yank a fully formed hand into place. Without further sound, most of Liu assembled, torso propped up by hands. One of his pant legs was trapped between his shin bones and the knee-cap and thigh bone.

Abashedly he propped himself up and began pulling the bottom hem of the pant leg toward the knee so he could free it and let it rest normally and silently kicked himself for letting that feather duster contact the gem. He looked for people touching it, not their things. Perhaps it was a matter of intention, or some other factor he had not the faculty to think of. In any case, he got no satisfaction from suggesting that they were delivering themselves as sacrifices, as vessels. He wondered faintly what would have happened to him, had he touched it. Perhaps all of the faint ambitions he sought in this realm would have been realized. Perhaps this thing would supplant him and his mind would be swallowed in its desperate clawing verdancy. The irony of his position alone demanded he consider the mean between the two, a worse torture than either. Contemplating this and more, he responded mindlessly to Esther, "surely if it were capable of doing that, we would already be loam. It must be something else..." and contemplated some more, but kept the idea that it moved her body forward into a state of infancy somehow, within the confines of his own mind, a nubile thought born of sudden unwanted ego death.

[The Grand Duchy] Labyrinth of the Primordial Bloom [FINISHED]

Liu's world became white hot. Where his body collided with the wall, much like the time he probed the forest from its mouth, his entire body came apart, phalanges rebounding from the wood and landing in another corner entirely, clattering across the ground like spilled marbles. His forearm bones flew out of his sleeves and ricocheted against the adjacent wall, spinning before bouncing off the ground and bouncing near the table. His leg bones jerked his pant leg and folded it in half, the cloth collapsing, and his shirt became a misshapen lump of fabric with the ends of ribs pushing bumps into its surface. Even his skull bounced off the back wall and rolled under the table while his jaw was left behind half way, spinning for a moment before coming to a silent rest like the rest of his members.

His vision was set to white, he could hear nothing but the sound of several tones -- melodic each but combined into chaos in his soul. His entire body was wreathed in a profound feeling, indistinguishable between hot and cold, dull enough that it could not be called pain but nothing else could be felt, and for the first time in a very long time, he could smell. It was the smell of green-leaf volatiles; it smelled like a grass field cleared for agriculture or a wheat field being harvested. He could only recline in the feeling. In the initial moment he had no clue if it was lessening but he could tell by the gradual dimming, the rapid fading of the smell, and the decline of the noise that in moments he would be back on line, but for now all is white and sound.

Actions:
1. Convalesce

[The Grand Duchy] Labyrinth of the Primordial Bloom [FINISHED]

"Fine," Liu mumbled, his voice sounding distant despite his proximity. He stood up straight and dusted off his person. This mundane dusting did nothing to clear the sap and mud. Some leaves peeled off of his garb but many of them just shifted a centimeter down. That would have to do, "I am fine, thank you for your concern," he replied dryly. Until now, his tone was most always smooth, respectful, and subtle. His response to Esther was firm and forceful, a break from normalcy.

Liu strode into the derelict cabin at last. Dolls leered at him and he watched back with suspicion. Penny's tidying job made him feel better -- since he could easily see if one of them began to move. On his way by her, he patted her shoulder, an emboldening gesture of gratitude. It left some faint streaks of jungle detritus where he patted.

He waited for the doctor to finish his explanation before cautiously reviewing the journal, surveying text scrawled on the open page. He had no heuristic for determining the age of this scrawling. The lunatic did not deign to keep track of the date, so obsessed with the heart and the forest were they. Squirming internally, he swapped suddenly to not looking at the dolls before asking gently, "if this text is related to anything in our reality, it seeks an avatar. I do not believe our illustrious forewoman mentioned anything about missing persons but I cannot assume it doesn't already have something. Or... we are delivering some options in ourselves. Unless it wants a child," he looked around at the group once more, counting once more to ensure they didn't have any bona-fide children -- creatures appear so young anymore, he is beginning to have trouble telling.

"I suppose it is reassuring, at least, that this entity is not cunning enough to fashion an acceptable body for itself. What is this stone, then? If not the source of twisting nature, is this merely a piece of it, or an empty eggshell?" He pondered aloud, walking in a circle around the stone, his eyes flitting nervously between the dolls aligned on the wall, each perched to take his head off, the stone, and the forest outside, expecting some kind of impending encroachment. He hoped faintly that they were not arriving during some kind of gestation period. He hoped that thoroughness and care were not their enemy. This thrum he wasn't sure if they all felt seemed to him to be what one expected of a presence noticing them. Sometimes steady and assured, or ignorant, other times attentive and bearing animus through its leafy envoys. For a moment he considered touching it. Guilty at the recklessness of the thought, he allowed it to perish and stood watch for any of his compatriots to make the same move, and resolved to stop them from doing so, no matter how far above or below him they stood on the social ladder.

[The Grand Duchy] Labyrinth of the Primordial Bloom [FINISHED]

Liu felt his vision distort a bit at the utterance of this creature's name, as though he viewed the world through some fluid medium in which the name caused a ripple. He did not mutter it but stood still for a moment to process and looked down at his hand curiously, observing for more, subtle things for interest's sake. A curious happening like this was new to him. He would have to think about it later, however, as this curtain of darkness melted away. Light broke through overhead and then the walls dissipated, curling into the earth like smoke in an unseen wind -- indeed this jungle did much to stifle the mundane kind -- his head snapped up toward the group, and then toward the shack. The mission.

He peered in behind Esther, leaning in. His form froze in place as he peered from left to right in the room. Magical glowing crystal in the middle of the room? Wouldn't be the first time. Madman's journal detailing the depravity through which this awful outcome was achieved? New, but not terribly out of sorts. Something to be thankful for. Dolls.

Liu quietly cleared his throat and leaned out of the shack, stepping a couple steps away and placed his hands on his shoulders, mimicking the sounds of deep breathing while peering at the ground and kicking a leaf that was sticking up from the loam. Why did it have to be dolls? He could remember vividly the stories of jiang-shi, possessed puppets, and so on told in the wee hours. He has seen a mushroom the size of a small house get up and speak. He's seen a titan made of ice and magic rear back and do its best to smash him to dust. Liu crouched down and began poking at the dirt, mumbling inaudibly to himself, "dolls... I would rather more beasts... an evil dragon maybe... what did I do to deserve this?"

[The Grand Duchy] Labyrinth of the Primordial Bloom [FINISHED]

Liu, impressed with the lordling's power, began to step forward carefully. It was in that moment that the surroundings were engulfed in darkness. Magic. Perhaps some form of confinement. Right behind him the form of Vaust melted away. His head turned to the side with his back fasting 'Vaust,' as though to regard the form from the corner of his 'eye,' then he turned around to converse, not shy about coming within close proximity. Though this nonconsensual use of magic set his hackles up and he had the urge to drop-kick this being with the extent of his speed, the fact is that this entity had plenty of opportunity to harm him and did not. He chose to believe that the being wanted to make contact with Iberis. He chose to speak in the language of )undeath( to this creature, a language he did not need to be taught as it emanated from the core of his being in a way he could not describe if he wanted to.

)"Resplendent, it helps distract from the unceremoniousness. I am not at liberty to say where one can find my master. I can assure you that I will deliver your wish to make contact; I deliver all wishes to make contact. We may converse about this once our task is behind us,"( he confirmed. Up to this point, his tone was somewhat soft, like a diaphanous curtain. Here, his tone dried up. He delivered the affirmation with an impertinent command, in an arid tone and the words came out with speed, stiff and veiled with the vague threat of starting off on the wrong foot with 'the human necromancer.'

Liu adjusted his filthy garb a bit and turned back in the direction he was facing originally. Though he had no inkling of how precisely this ability worked, for all he knew it could be entirely in his own mind, he had his doubts that the illustrious professor could stop time and thought it relatively unlikely that they had been swallowed by a personal domain. He knows the feeling of traveling between planes.

[The Grand Duchy] Labyrinth of the Primordial Bloom [FINISHED]

Liu rose from the kill and stared down at it for a moment. It was unclear whether, if his vision were actually obscured by this darkness (it was not), the dead creature at his feet would look more or less morbid. Gore, glistening bone, things that should be hidden inside taken apart in a mess. He could feel his mind sliding back to the past. Eyes he knew the prior night, once shining with life and wit and humor, lifeless and staring blankly at the unseen horizon, silent witness to the fate of all things, suddenly a stranger. The audacity of the dead to share its face with what once lived set his jaw. Bounding from the scene before him, nausea leapt for his guts with vise hands. It passed through, he has no guts to speak of. Malaise was wiped away by the issue at hand.

Continuing on their way, he stopped cold when he noticed the bipedal creature on top of a mountainous beast. He had no idea where to look first. When it was suggested that he enter the building, he replied, "if there is a fight inside, I am not deadly enough to finish it silently. If there is a fight out here, anything inside will join us. Though I do not yearn for battle, if we leave this creature behind us while we investigate the center of the forest, it opens us to being cut off if a hasty retreat is required. I believe we should ensure there are no more enemies in the area before engaging with it carefully."

While he voiced his analysis, his occult sight probed the area around them searching for any further problems, but he did not make any moves to act, ducking down and making sure he was out of sight while speaking in a very low tone.

1. Hide
2. Search the area for signs of life, activating [Supersense D].
3. --

Stats

Strength B
Precision A
Intelligence A
Vitality B
Speed A