Mokley

Moonfiend

By the time her phone had landed with a loud clatter and an infectious jingle Berry was scurrying to the door. She had turned off the map but it lay imprinted on her eyes casting shadowy visages in the dark. The curtain tore behind her but Berry didn’t dare turn to look. She grabbed the door handle as something crashed behind her and she was through the door, slamming it shut behind her.

Frenzied claws tore into the curtain, flinging and yanking the fabric to a rumble of hissing snarls; the rod snapped and crashed and toppled an old chest that dumped wigs and uniforms and bright gaudy necklaces to the stage.

Berry's abandoned phone cast a bright square of light on the floor below. Music echoed hollow throughout the walls.

♫ Wondrous and magical, adventurous and whimsical, it's the fantastic adventures of Corduroy Jack! ♫

Out of the shredded remains of the fallen curtain, a shadow emerged. It seethed and flickered like black fire, and it moved on two legs and then four, white gleaming eyes searching and slitted nostrils flaring. Immediately the creature flitted to the edge of the stage, leaning over it, hissing like a long-toothed gargoyle at the shining thing on the floor.

"What's the matter, Princess? Don't you cry!"
"But Corduroy Jack, a ghost stole my teddy bear away!"
"Aw, well you know there's no such things as ghosts! It was probably your little brother, y'know."

The Grit's head tilted deeply, and with a flicker and a scurry it picked up the phone by the corner, between two claws, and stared at the glowing screen.

"But my brother's been missing since we went to the Wall!"

With a sniff and a gurgling snarl, the Grit flicked the phone away and slunk on all fours after the lingering warm scent, to stop at the locked door. It scratched experimentally, then dug its claws into the wood with a cracking and splintering noise.

"Don't you worry, Princess."

The door slammed open and ricocheted against the wall, a splintered hole where the lock used to be.

"We'll find your brother -- and your teddy bear too!"

"Don't run much closer, Miss Berry!" Roy's voice called out from the hallway ahead. When Berry had ascended the stairs, she was faced with a pillar of familiar bluish light -- it was the same sort of light that glowed beneath the hovercars and on the tracks of the bullet trains, the glow of an antigravity field. The robot was pinned to the ceiling, against a metal panel, completely unable to move any of his limbs while he was bathed in the blue light that shone out of the floor.

There was just enough room on either side of the light for Berry to squeeze through, but it would take a few moments to navigate this safely. On the opposite side of the light, should she make it past without being stuck to the ceiling herself, a small panel in the wall would surely give her access to the controls for the antigravity trap. Once the metal door in the wallpaper was opened, inside was a touch-screen and two simple buttons: ACTIVATE and DEACTIVATE.

Alternatively, directly to her right was a slightly open door to a dark washroom, where the water in the sink trickled faintly.

Much farther down the same hallway there came a dim hissing noise, and the scrape of scales against wood as another Grit was hot on Vincent's trail.

Meanwhile, the shadow-creature slinked and flickered out of the broken stage door and flitted up the stairs, chasing Berry's scent and gnashing its teeth with excitement.

---

"Okay, Randy. We gotta figure this out. You clearly don't want me dying, otherwise we wouldn't be here and I'd be laying in that puddle of blood and be that Grit's next meal. I am not interested in running though. Together we've got more than enough to remove the threat, and thanks to the Queen I know how to kill the things. We-we got this. I just need you to work with me on this.

"Damn it all. This wasn't supposed to happen."

"This was always going to happen!" Randy snapped shrilly, a little shaken at the sight of dear Maribeth the maid standing stony in the narrow corridor. "I have the estate protocol in the event of a Grit invasion -- your father knew this would happen, and we all thought he was crazy. There's a page with the security passcode folded into that Rounard Skip book about dreams and souls. I --!" He cut off at the banging and scraping noise in the walls -- then an eerie and unsettling quiet.

"Don't run much closer, Miss Berry!" Roy's voice echoed dimly down the hallway outside Vincent's bedroom door.

Randy was silent a moment. Something scaly scraped against the walls in the hallway, coming closer. The serpentine Grit slithered nearer, poking its head at each door in turn, eventually to find the one that led into the place where Vincent was.

"That's Maribeth's soul, isn't it?" Randy said in a hushed voice, referencing the stone clutched in Vincent's other hand. "Please don't do anything stupid. I'll strike."

The serpent, meanwhile, had found Vincent's door and pressed its nose into the wood -- but, of course, the door wouldn't budge. With a scraping and a hissing, it bunched and wound itself in front of the door and reared its ugly head; this Grit was unable to force its way through, but it was intelligent enough to know that Vincent would have to come out at some point, either through this door or through the narrow passageway -- and it would be ready to ambush him the moment he made a decision.

Echo

Posted! :D

Anyone who's still working on a post, please do continue writing and go ahead with whatever you have planned!

Echo

“How many others of us are there, might I inquire? And how—how in such an earthly name did all of this come about? I cannot think the Kingdom has succumb to such turmoil in only half a decade’s time. Should we be able to locate our friends and family prior to our deaths, now? -- No…”

Doctor Kelodie watched, silent, while Doctor Howell slowly came to terms with what was happening -- as if the translucency of the stone somehow contained the truth of all things. Kelodie bit his lip and glanced repeatedly out at the caravan, nervous and impatient on behalf of the losing battle being waged in the mud, of the fading screams of the child, of the destruction that, to his living eyes, seemed impossible to comprehend -- but he gave the resurrected their space. Death should have been the end of them, as far as Nature was concerned. Now they were being asked to prevent others from sharing their fate.

He took a breath, and he chose to ignore the question about family and friends -- the answer seemed already clear on Howell's face. "A dozen have left here over the past six months, each with a bag of those stones." He nodded to the sack that lay open on the floor, its contents glimmering. "As of today, I can only account for the location of one. She's keeping watch over the crypt of the Third MODO -- due north of here, alongside the lake." He glanced outside again, tapping his foot. "Y'know," he huffed with a flash of a tight grin, speaking quickly, "I really do think and believe that these things are far easier to comprehend when you've seen and interacted with them first, or else the explanations and history will make no real sense with no context, right? So I must suggest --"

A hiss of steam issued from one of a network of thin pipes that crossed the ceiling; Kelodie glanced up, and prattled even faster than before: "I must go and check on the machines immediately. I've given you all I can -- please, take those stones, seek out Rirane to the north, she has a much better grasp on the situation than I do. I'm just the mechaniker." He flashed a grin and bowed low. "Good luck," he said just before he ducked into the stairwell and disappeared into the dark below.

"Help!" a young woman cried at the foot of the sanctuary steps. She was covered in mud, her hair all askew; a spindle-armed creature clung to her back. She couldn't see the horrid thing that hung from her shoulders, grinning with sharp teeth and big eyes. It was very nearly sinking its claws into her, and she had no idea it was there. "Hello! I see you in there! Please! My sister is taken, please help us! What kind of sanctuary is this, where you all stand and watch children get kidnapped? Please, I beg you!" She stared pleadingly into the dark beyond the open door of the temple, where she had seen the moving silhouettes of people inside.

Behind her, the caravaners attacked empty air with their shovels and shot at nothing with their muskets, hoping in vain to hit one of the invisible creatures. In reality, the creatures were retreating, returning in droves into the trees and taking off as fast as they could flee. A few of the spindly creatures remained, flitting back and forth between the wagons, gleefully dodging bullets and shovels.

Sqwaaak!

An ethereal screech rang in Howell's ears, and he would see a flash of bright orange and blue feathers, partially obscured by a tree. A long black beak snapped out suddenly, catching one of the foul little beasts by the leg. This new creature stepped out from behind the tree, flinging and snapping its prey like a heron swallows a fish. This new creature was shaped like a deer, but was covered in shimmering feathers and had the long neck and sharp beak of an exotic bird. Once it had swallowed the smaller creature, the bird-deer fluffed its feathers and squawked in threat at the others.

The people of the caravan hadn't seen or noticed anything at all. The bird-deer, too, was completely invisible to everyone but Howell. He was witnessing an entirely different plane of existence overlapped with his own.

---

"My name is.. Kazuki. "

After leaving Doctor Howell in the sanctuary, Doctor Kelodie sprinted through the dim stone hall and skidded, out of breath, into the pod room -- where he immediately found a child, out of his pod and wrapped in a robe.

Doctor Kelodie stood uncertain and mystified by the child's appearance. The man who stood before Kazuki now was rather short in stature, with sandy hair and thick, multi-lensed goggles atop his forehead. He wore weathered white coat, noting his profession as a doctor, and he stared in confusion down at Kazuki.

"Hello there." He flashed a small grin and squatted down closer to the child's level. "I'm Doctor Kelodie, welcome to my lab, may I ask how you got out of your pod?"

Kelodie was very confident that he was the only person here -- he maintained and managed the lab all on his own -- but unless one of the other awakened had been helping this child, it was strange that he had so quickly got out and found himself clothes.

To Kazuki's eyes, however, he really could see the nurses and doctors that moved around the room. Some of those nurses passed through machinery as if it wasn't there, and others flickered as they walked -- all of them, of course, had been dead a long time. In a room full of people, only Doctor Kelodie appeared vibrant and whole and alive.

Kelodie caught the child's eyes tracking movement that wasn't there, and thought he understood.

"Kazuki is your name, right?" He smiled gently. "You're seeing ghosts. But don't be afraid, it's your particular gift -- yours, it seems, is even stronger than most. You're seeing things the others didn't even notice." He laughed quietly, intrigued about this new heightened sensitivity in the child -- and maybe it was exactly because this was a child that the senses were so bright.

Doctor Kelodie stood and offered a hand to Kazuki. "Come with me. There are so many things I want to show you."

Kelodie led Kazuki down a darkened hall, then up a dim staircase into a wide old hall littered with dust, scattered with ancient blankets and pillows, and pocked by weeds and roots. A bronze statue presided over it all: a great lion with three heads, three wings and wild painted eyes. The path between the stairwell and the open double doors had been cleared and scraped by repeated drag-marks. At each corner of the room was a blue-glowing device that whirred and spun: the points of an invisible barrier meant to keep something out.

This was where he had left Howell, who may or may not still be present within the sanctuary. Outside the open doors there was a lot of shouting and screeching on the muddy road below.

Cree-eeak.

A big, bright blue toad hopped slowly across the dusty floor of the sanctuary. It was the size of a dinner plate, with warty dry skin that had swirls of purple and blue and spots of yellow. The toad had three dark eyes that each blinked independently. Every time its throat expanded, a fiery sort of glow shimmered within the thin membrane.

Doctor Kelodie could not see the toad; he had no idea it was there. Instead, he let go of the child's hand and offered Kazuki a finger-sized shard of translucent green stone. Deep within the stone were pinpricks of light, like a small galaxy swirled within. "You have a very special gift, Kazuki. You're what we call an Echo. People who are Echoes can use these stones to catch strange creatures that only you can see. Would you like that? To have some very special pets?"

Echo

@RokkuHoshi Awesomeness! Whatever you're comfortable with, really! If you post a WIP just post again to signal when you're done. :)

Lantern

@Birds and Bear Woohoo! I hope you'll finally get some time for rest and relaxation! <3

@c3p-0h I know I'm totally a week overdue, but I've finally given your post a proper read and damn that's some good stuff right there. Cheers!

Unquiet

Hey guys, sorry but I'm going to have to close shop on this one. I made the mistake of starting out with a vague concept and no plans, and have been entirely at a loss for where to go with this plot. Live and learn! As for now, to be honest, I'd personally rather try something new than try to salvage this.

So, thanks for your awesome characters and awesome writing, and I'll see you in another one sometime!

Echo

@RokkuHoshi Salt is pretty good for flavoring and keeping food.

If you're talking about a supernatural sense, the answer is not at all.

I've got to insist that all characters must know nothing at all about the alternate reality. It is far simpler for me, as a GM, to teach the characters IC what is happening rather than trying to work around what your character may or may not already know. A religion like Wicca is totally cool -- you could even make up your own religion -- and it might become significant to the plot, but your character will not have more knowledge in what is happening than anyone else. Sorry, hope that's clear!

Echo

@RokkuHoshi Sure, Wicca is a thing! As long as it's up in the air as to whether the spells actually work or if it's just willpower/coincidence. :D

Echo

@RokkuHoshi Oh hi! Thanks! :D There are quite a few limits, actually, but they're all listed in the first post of the OOC. Essentially all characters must be human with no supernatural knowledge or powers, and you start out with zero possessions. :)

Echo

Here's a poke! Last call, anybody planning a post? ;)