Mokley

Lantern

Aww poor Hania! :(

Hey red team, if you guys are having trouble responding I can still edit. I'm thinking of rearranging a few things in that post to make it more relevant to everyone, and to give you all more than one thing to respond to. I'll do that soon I think.

Edit: Ok, Red team! I've severely edited your last mod post in admission that I didn't do a very good job with it, and in attempt to give you something more substantial to work with: Clicky for convenience

Red_massa I believe your post is still relevant so no need to do anything with that unless you want to.

I'll also tweak green team's post, as I forgot to mention something.

Lantern

Damiann and drewccapp, then excellent for the prayer that brings you all together! Woot for character development! Yay for desperation!

And now: green team is up to bat!

Lantern

Kituo said Hoping to useful for once, Kituo slowly approached the tall guy and tried to coax the rat off of him.

“C’mon little guy,” he said. “Its okay.”

He stopped a few feet away in hopes of maintaining some security. He didn’t expect the rat to heed his generosity – it was an animal after all. Kituo’s only goal was to try and lose the title of weakest link.

The rodent was a bit smaller than a squirrel, with ears each as big as its body and a fluffy tail that was striped tawny and brown beneath the matting of snake blood. Its whiskers wriggled, and it craned its neck back to stare with black beady eyes at Kituo. Its furry tail swished.

In a blink, it sprang off of Thomas and was suddenly clinging to Kituo's sleeve, its tail flinging in circles. With sharp little claws it scurried behind his neck and snuffled in his ear, its whiskers tickling his cheek.

And then, it emitted a piercing, echoing sound:

RRRRRRR-EK-EK-EK-EK-EK-EK

Its claws were digging into Kituo's shoulder and its jaws were open wide as it screeched, revealing a mouthful of thin needle-like teeth. Those teeth would immediately sink into whatever attempted to touch it.

Thomas said Now vaguely aware of the rodent on his back, Thomas clutched his forehead with his injured hand in disbelief. Blood dripped off of it onto his brow and into his hair.

The strange warmth brought him back to his senses. He jerked his hand away from his face, quickly wiping off the blood with his sleeve. As the other boy tried to coax the thing that shook on his back, Thomas stared at his hand.

It hurt. And every movement made it hurt more.

For awhile, the wound only throbbed and bled. And then, a tingling numbness began at the punctures and slowly, slowly spread into his palm, his fingers, his wrist. His heart began to pound, and his vision wavered in and out.

And then, a chemically induced fear gripped him. It was like a black ice that engulfed his stomach and dragged his heart into his gut, all while setting fire to his brain. The trees of the forest were stark and menacing, their branches and roots grasping for him, alive and teeming like snakes. The ground moved under his feet. The shriek of the rodent on Kituo's shoulder struck his ears like an icepick. Something in the woods was snarling, hissing, laughing, mocking him with jaws that would devour him like the minstrel. But all of this was obvious only to Thomas -- Kituo could neither see nor hear it.

To Thomas, the lantern's green light was beckoning, soothing. Out here, in the weeds at the edge of the light's reach, the pain and the screeching and the tremble of his heart were only growing stronger. The closer to the light he moved, the lesser his symptoms, the easier he could see and breathe and think.

The tree ticked and clanked on. The roots dragged back into the woods, leaving a trail of fragrant turned earth behind them. A breeze whispered through the trees above. The silver key glimmered in the grass.

In the distance, a wolf howled.

Lantern

Ok, done!!

Let me know if anything doesn't make sense. I literally just hacked apart the last post and glued it together to make something new, with some added sentences. I kinda like it, actually.

Sorry Anise and Randold, but Hania's the only one right now who can make things happen with a prayer. ;)

Edit: ANISE. Why do I keep writing Ania. Whyyyyyy.

Lantern

Wah! I finished two hours of writing a post and posted to find people had done stuff in the meantime!

Okay guys, uhm uuhhhmmm! You'll have to pick whether you want your version or my version of events -- and one of us will have to edit accordingly. ^^;

Sorry, shoulda let you know I was writing.

Edit: I need two votes one way or another to decide what sticks: Princess saves Randold and Anise or they all get separated. I am willing to rewrite my post if the votes go to the princess.

Edit2: Nevermind, I just figured out what can go down, I'm editing now. Nobody move! Stay!

Lantern

Anise said She cried out at the top of her lungs. "Randold! Other girl! I'm coming to help!" She felt odd calling out someone by their sex instead of their name. Back in her castle she had known everyone by name: her maid, the guards, the stable boy, the other maids, her father, her mother, and many others. She waited briefly for a reply before she slowly and cautiously headed after the scream she had heard. Her heart pounded so hard she thought that it might end up jumping out of her throat.

The trees around her were dark, twisting, tangled, dripping with moss and lichen and thick swaths of spiderweb, their branches thin like veins. The ground was soft and fanned with ferns. The air had grown damp and thick and cool, as if just after the rain. Fog crept around her like something alive.

And then, fireflies appeared out of the fog, pulsing their light. They moved ahead of her, guiding her, while the forest seemed to creep all around.

Finally there was a break in the trees, and Anise would see the back of the lantern-tree rising up ahead of her. The wolf was digging in the ground, snapping at little striped rodents that darted in the weeds. Whenever a rodent would get close to Randold or Hania, the wolf would leap upon it and gnash it between its jaws. But only Anise could see this -- to Randold and Hania, it was only a terrible noise in the dark.

Randold said He stared into the blackness, he mentally steeled himself then yelled to the wolf, and whatever was with it. "I do not know why we are here, and in honestly I do no need to. What I do know is that we... they, the others that came with me to this land, have done nothing wrong that they deserve to live. So I ask you, whoever you are, to allow us to leave, myself and the girl here with me, to reunite with our comrades." Randold paused unsure if he should continue, however he knew that just asking wouldn't be enough. "If my first request cannot be fulfilled, then instead only allow the girl to survive, you can consider my own life to be forfeit, that I will cease any struggles to resist only if she is allowed to escape."

A low, rumbling growl emitted from the dark wolf. The hissing sound of creatures weaving through the grass grew closer. There were no words, but Randold would discover that he knew instinctively that the snarl was not a threat. It was a warning.

There was a voice in his head, like a hissing whisper in the depths of his ear. It did not belong to the wolf, but to something or someone that permeated the dark forest itself: I accept your bargain. She will be spared. And you, as forfeit, are mine.

At that moment, something small and light landed on Randold and stabbed the back of his neck as with a white-hot pin. A searing, crippling pain ravaged down his spine like fire.

Only Anise, perhaps, would see the huge black spider as it struck.

The wolf lunged forward, opened its jaws and wrenched the thing off of him; a crunching and snarling accompanied the hiss of the weeds around them.

Hania said The meanings seem deep, but she recites them without giving them a thought, its as if she's reciting from memory rather than meaning. As if she were reciting something in a different language than her own:

All the gods, deposed and ascended, I beseech now in my time of need,
Guthrun, deposed councilor, give me comfort as I ride into battle,
Runa, ascended councilor, give me the knowledge I need to defeat my foe,
Herleifr, deposed general, give me cunning that I might cheat death,
Ragnheithr, ascended general, give me foresight to counter my foes' advance.
Ethelred, deposed king, give me the courage to face my final foe,
Cynefrith, ascended king, give me righteous justice if I pass to the next life.
. . . Bless me, make me holy, burn off my sins and restore my virgin soul.

There was a small light in the darkness: the iron flower of Hania's rosary pulsed a faint glow, like that of the runes on the platform. To Randold's eyes, it softly illuminated Hania's face.

Anise said She quickly acted by doing the one thing she could think to do: slam the branch she held into the vines to get them to let go. She didn't have much for strength, but she put as much of her weight as she could into the strike hoping it would do something.

The roots around Randold's leg relaxed as if suddenly dead -- and so did the surface beneath them. For they were not sitting on the solid ground at all, but on a net of mossy roots that stretched across the gaping hole beneath the platform. The once-solid surface unraveled quickly, sagged, and dropped away under them like broken string. In the dark, Randold, Hania and Anise would find themselves suddenly falling.

Should any of them attempt to crawl back onto solid ground -- where the rodents were teeming and squeaking and hissing -- the wolf lunged at them with a gnashing snarl and shoved them forcefully back into the well.

Randold, Hania and Anise could cling to the roots as they fell, but they would only break away the moment weight was put on them. The sounds of rushing weeds and the growling wolf slipped away above them; in the darkness they could feel the air shift, and walls close in around them as they fell, and fell, with no way to know just how long they had to fall.

Far above them, a wolf howled.

They would catch a glimpse of fireflies before they splashed into the still surface of the water. It was warm and deep.

The fireflies hovered over the surface of the water, their pulsing glow reflected like glass. Only Anise might see that they were inside a wide cavern, and that a smooth rocky shoreline was only a short distance away.

Something beneath the water brushed Hania's leg.

Arin said He curiously observed the flying insect hover behind him. To his amazement, more appeared seemingly out of thin air. He gripped the lantern tightly, his eyes glistening the red and yellow light that illuminated his face. He admired the sight of the insects, and couldn't help but grow fond of their presence. He was mesmerized.

Arin pulled his eyes away from the curious sight before him, laying them back on the path that Anise had bolted down. With a malevolent expression in his face and movements, he followed the princess.

He had taken his eyes off of Anise. When he looked again, and no matter how far or fast he ran with the reddened light ahead of him, she would not reappear. He would not hear Hania's cries, nor Anise's response. Only crickets, and the sigh of the wind in the trees -- and a rustling and squeaking in the bushes.

The owl sat on a branch just ahead, watching him with eyes that stared into his soul. Beyond it, a single path led onward and up a hill. There was a small candlelight in the distance, and the sound of rushing water, but the light didn't reach far enough to show him what was there.

The owl swooped down from the branch with silent wings, opened its beak and devoured a few of the fireflies in one snap.

Cries, chanting, the howl of a wolf, a faint splash of water -- all of it led to the right, where with the lantern's help he might stumble upon the tree, the opened platform, the angry wolf with little rodents jumping on it and biting its pelt.

TICK . . . TOCK . . . TICK . . . TOCK . . .

The metal platform began to turn again, to seal the cavern once more.

Lantern

YandereNoodle said
That helps a lot, yeah. Im rewriting the thing now - Would it make sense that the forest lets us speak any language and have it be understood by everyone? Because we obviously don't have any language barrier established and we come from different places in the world - possibly even completely different worlds.

excellent point! I had the same thought when we started but didn't want to make things more complicated than they had to be. I would've assigned that ability to the lanterns. Assume you're still very much close enough to the lantern -- or a lantern -- to communicate freely.

Lantern

YandereNoodle said
Wait- what? I thought the platform was a really big thing -.-

Hmm, you raise a good point. The idea in my head was that the platform was not that big, but then again I don't think I specified that in the descriptions.

Ok, it is established that Randold took a running leap and grabbed Hania. He made the attempt, he succeeded. However, he did so just as the last light was fading. When he landed, it was in complete darkness. Therefore, it may not be completely clear whether he landed on the ground or on a net of roots, which may or may not intend to drag you both inside.

Does that help, maybe?

Lantern

Excellent posts from Green team! I suspect LowKey may be away for a bit, so we'll go on with Thomas and Kituo for now.

Where the Sky Meets the Mountain

Crooked-nose squinted at Nils. "Ya ask a lotta smarmy questions, doncha kid? Where's yer mum? Why docha go play in some broken glass or somethin?"

"Now, now, it's obvious that our friend here has knowledge and experience in the field of air sailing," Baldie said with a serene smile. "We shouldn't embarrass ourselves by admitting how useless we are."

Crooked-nose took a mouthful of coffee and gave his companion a curious glare. What game was he playing?

Baldie went on, addressing Nils: "We're waiting for the captain to arrive," he explained, "and he will, when the time is right. You see," he leaned down with a finger against the side of his nose in secrecy, "the captain is very particular about his sailors. Only those who'll wait and believe in him will get to set off. Already we've lost the navigator and the cabin boy to a rampant case of impatience."

Crooked-nose raised his eyebrows and grinned. "That's right. Sorry, kid -- we might've recruited you to fill a position, but you seem ta be the impatient sort." He waved his hand in dismissal.