[The Strands] Pollywobber worship

[Anton]

32th Fall, 512 AV

Picture Scene:

Desert. Lots of sand. Nice climate. Idealized version of home, maybe. All warmth. No cold. No baggage. No deathpits. Empty? Never empty, but close enough. Good. Hate company, including one exception that now forced to keep. Stupid, really. Laws of Universe forcing arbitrary, cruel conditions on otherwise successful infiltration. Wrong. Infiltration? Word choice poor. Incorrect.

Migration.

No.

Not quite accurate either.

...

Exodus. Flight. Hegira. Diaspora.

One will do.

Better.

Expansive tongue. Too many synonyms. Tiresome. Excessive.

...

Boring. Dull. Annoying. Laborious. Onerous. Tedious. Uninteresti-

...

Admission: Pretty fun. Could get used to.

File the thought.

Moving on:

The anchor slumbers still. Opening move yet confounds. Establishing seniority and dominance in partnership through casual confidence, through a brazen showcase of the failings of flesh, of that dread curse? Or patiently biding for first strike. But mine or its? Can anchor monitor surroundings while passive? Must assume so. Must assume the worst. Have seen some. Wonder how much more. Test limits? Gradually. No surprise. Universe in balance. Something so steeped in failings of flesh must have adaptations to balance out absurd inherent weaknesses.

Flaw. Vulnerability. Delicacy. Imperfection. Sandi-

Stop. Stop.

Fun. But Stop.

File the thought.

Moving on:

Choose to wait.

Told self that 3 bells ago.

Done waiting.

Waited so long back on other side. Squandered chances. Picky. Cost me. None came after. Others left first. Idiot and traitor, but left first. Until anchored Darkies chanced upon. Trap. Obvious. Darkies always obvious.

Still took it.

Worked out.

...In weirdest, most contrived way possible, worked out.

Darkies never saw it coming. Never gets old. Seeing darkies burn and shrivel.

Waking up. Anchor waking up.

Act natural.

Act very natural.

...No local foliage to heighten performance. Bother.

...

Greetings!

And Anton woke up to the sound of something and the feel of sand beneath and around.

His first thought: Damn, that was one good sleep.

His second thought: Really good- Wait, where's Rhylund?

His third to twenty-seventh thought, going on the paraphrased lines of: Where in...How did...What am I doing here?

His twenty-eighth thought: something feels weird.

His twenty-ninth thought, which failed to happen, bless its aborted soul, because he was interrupted by yet another Greetings!

He blinked, pawed and shook his head free of sand, and blinked again, then turned his head in the direction that the voice should have been coming from, rather than resounding inside his head.

Floating infront of him was a tiny blob of translucent blue.

Huh. Typical day in Alvadas.

"Hello." he said. No harm returning courtesies to an illusion.

We have exchanged formalities...What next?

Blink. The voice was low and slightly warped and gave him the faintest impression of bubbles. "Um, yes." He didn't quite understand, but hey, illusion. Just go along until it faded or exploded or flowed up or left. Or he left, in this case. "It's been very nice to meet you, Ser blob," he squeaked. "but I must be going. Can I trouble you to tell me where are we or what day it is?"

...Was hoping you could impart the information, actually.

Another blink. Oh bother, he had to encounter a STUPID illusion, but he said: "Okay. Thanks, anyway. Best be going."

Going where?

Looking out at the desert, at the boundless dunes that gave no start or end, he wondered about that. His head was still fuzzy about how he got here, but he remembered things, things that could have been dreams, of Rhylund and a drink that tasted funny and the desert. He remembered lizards and dogs and imps of stone bound to nomads without color and a leader of theirs who offered him the chance to join them. But where did the dream start and where did the dream end? And why wasn't he panicking? The idea that he wasn't panicking over this absurdity, even in the city of illusions, made him, ironically, panic. It was like he was perfectly comfortable with all this, finding perfect sense in waking up in the desert in the middle of nowhere.

He took a deep breath, exhaled, inhaled, exhaled again. Take it easy, Anton. You've been through worst. Nowhere as stupid or as without context, but you've been through worst.

An inquiry: How does one 'take it easy'. Varying degrees of larceny?

"It's an expression, silly. It-" Wait.

Wait.

Did the blob just...

Wait.

Wait.

Into his mind?

Wait

WAIT.

That was no illusion.

It all came back to him now.

Rhylund. Armond. Kirt. Circle. Fryden.

What was that last piece, that last fragment...

"Oh. Sarawanki" he said, as it dawned on him. "Hello, Pollywobber."

Already exchanged formalities. But per needless insistence, hello human.

"Oh." dawning turned to crashing. "ohnonononononono."

Too formal? Jovial enthusiasm: Going to have so much fun together. Yay. Insert sharing of beverages here.

"ohnonono. NO. NO."

Striking familiarity: Have a meal together. Look, flesh. Ingest with great gusto.

Familiarity...Familiary...

"NO." What was he going to do? Sir was going to kill him, then revive him, then kill him again, then hung him up to dry the blood off, then -GASP!- ground him. Then put him in the ground, just to be sure. What was he going to do? What was he-

[Anton]

31st Fall, 512 AV

In which one negotiates terms with a Pascid while being deliriously drunk, Strand-whacked, and completely and utterly out of one's mind. Not the best first impression, to say the least.

"You have the honor of being chosen by Saurgon, first of the lightface." proclaimed, of course, Saurgon, first of the lightface, a white spiky octagon that that, despite lacking any features and being a world apart and, well, being a shape in general, somehow managed to convey a undeniable sense of arrogance and self-importance. "I, Saurgon, first of the lightface, have spoken thusly. You will accept or suffer the consequence-"

"Who's the second of the lightface?" The question had been gnawing at Anton for the entire paragraph, and he would have let him finish, if not for that pesky, meddling curiosity!

"Saurgon, first of the lightface, does not deign to answer that questio-"

"You don't know, do you? How can you not know who's second? I mean, you're the first, so there's clearly a ranking system somewhere-"

"Saurgon, first of the lightfac-"

"Papa told me never to trust an octagon. They have too many sides. Obvious overcompensation. Now a triangle...yeah, just three solid lines. Now that's security. Squares, on the other hand, could go both ways. Is four too much or too little, which brings about this question: Are triangles losing out in the treacherous, ever-growing shape econom-"

"SAURGON. DEMANDS. SILENCE."

"ANTON. IS. A. SILENCER. ANTON. EMBODIES. SILENCE. ANTON. CAN. QUIT. TALKING. ANY. TIME. HE. WANTS. HE. JUST. DOESN'T. FEEL. LIKE. IT. TODAY. IT'S. NOT. AN. ADDICTION. OR. ANYTHING."

"SUCH INSOLENCE, YOU SIMPLE CREATURE OF FLESH AND BLOOD."

"WELL..um. Well, you're fat. And white. You're like an albino fattie dumbdumb who went to acumen asylum and came back cunning, but not cunning enough to escape your rentlady."

"This conversation is over. Saurgon, first of the lightfac-"

"WAIT."

"No."

"I have a message from my sponsor he wants to find you a new candidate."

"I am done with humans and their irksome ways for this day."

"Human? Well, the other sponsor..."

And then Armond's kirt came into view.

"YOU-"

"YOU'VE BEEN KIRT'ED" Anton and the Kirt shouted in Unison. And with that, the circle closed, but not before Anton caught a glimpse of what it was like to snarl with murderously fury when you didn't actually have a mouth. Anton and the Kirt laughed and laughed, even though Anton soon forgot why he was laughing, or what he even did, while Armond the gray just, kinda, stared.

"We've been through five pascids. Enough pranks for today, my friend."

"It's over when I say it's over," came the rock beast Kirt. "One more. The circle, Armond."

One portal later...

"I am Vouldermoult. I wish for a partner in this worl-"

And in what would undoubtedly be a very, very long monologue, Anton instead delved right back into his little auristics trick, entertaining himself with the sights and sounds and colors of the world around him. Turning his head here and there and up and down between the grey auras of the Strains, the aura of the pascid and Kirt, which were similar in some ways, but radically different in so many others. Kirts were stone, that much was certain, but the aura of a pascid has a certain...fluidity to it. A sense of shifting, of heat in contrast to the Kirt's unnatural coldness and of brighter colors to the aura. But not light, not truly. Never light. There was nothing light about a Pascid, and Anton knew that...Until he forgot it 3 seconds later. The remembered. This was just weird.

"-Why are you shaking your head?" said the mix of fluid bright colors known as Vouldermoult.

Anton turned to Armond's kirt's aura, just out of view of the portal's viewing range, and nodded.

And so clearing his throat, he said, "Knock, knock."

[Anton]

32th Fall, 512 AV

Let's just get the obvious out of the way: Suicide is a bad thing.

However, when you get drunk on what could be a illusion-fueled potion, THEN get conventionally drunk on the advice of an unemployed bard, enter a desert with a reputation of being impossible to escape and then bind yourself permanently to an alien water being from an ice-lava hellscape for no reason at all. And then you try to kill said alien water being from an ice-lava hellscape.

That goes way beyond suicide. Well, no, technically it's still within the confines of suicide, but you get it.

And speaking of the opposite of getting it: someone doesn't know that the suicide happens when the alien dies.

So we continue with a non-verbal expression of the common phrase I'M GOING TO KILL YOU:

The res came to him and the res became water and water became a blast of concussive power sent straight at the pollywobber, who sort-of took flight, swerving to the air and to the side to dodge the water ball attack. Anton felt the tiniest...what's the word...trickle as the pollywobber did that, the keenest sense that someone had switched on a tap from an ale keg and left it running and he then knew: The thing drew from him, fed of that which gave him magic.

It violated him at his core.

The res came to his palms again, slipping off, crawling to the sand below, slithering and then the pollywobber spoke once again into his mind-

Weaponzing liquid. Against a liquid being. In the desert. While slowly de-hydrating. To say nothing of the breach of contract; idiotic. Human. What is the meaning of thi-

-And the res came out as a gust this time, a minor tempest that swept up around the Sarawanki. The sand came up with it from the desert ground and it swirled as the wind and the res did swirl, turning into tiny, little shards to blast kill the little pollywobber. And, suddenly, Anton felt a distinct sense of suprise, followed by claustrophobia, which quickly morphed into a grim sense of heightened-

There was a blast, and the wind was no more. Only Sarawanki remained.

And a sudden sense of loss, of weakness dawned on him. Dizziness, really.

Advice incoming. Shouldn't do anymore of that. Your reserves are-

Did he...

Did he just use reimancy?

HIS reimancy to blow away HIS reimancy and HIS res?

No...There was still just the trickle, after all. Probably the creature's natural attacks. But entertaining the idea that the creature -the parasite- could draw on his Magic, as it had invaded his mind and talk, and as he had briefly - he thought- invaded its.

Oh Trickster.

Oh Trickster, he was going to puke.

He took in a deep breath, then another, as the sarawanki watched. He wondered why the pollywobber didn't attack him, merely defending. Another breath, an impromptu mediation of sorts to calm the nerves, to find an quick and improvised measure of inner peace, to move past the anger and see not a parasite who had managed to worm his way into his very being while he was not mentally sound, but an enemy like no other. Impersonal. A danger. Needing to be destroyed for that sole reason. No true contempt to it.

A final fantasy is only final when it ends.

He ran towards the sarawanki as his djed ran straight to the void.

Nothing came to him as it had always did, and the blackness grew in the space right beside the sarawanki. At the same time, Anton found the astral piece of his left arm, and to put it mildly, practically tore it out. Pain surged through his arm, before dulling into a sort of numbness as the arm went limp, while the astral copy of it went forth. try to hold the familiar down as the void took it forever, armm be damned, or nudge the voida towards the familiar and let the pull take over?

Didn't need to answer. Sarawanki didn't even need to move either.

The astral arm rose, floated a little, and then moved to obey Anton...only to then drop, flopping around a little, rising up again, and then falling, before becoming still. The portal just stopped growing.

And in that moment, Anton realized the puking wasn't just about disgust for his current situation.

And he fell.

And he remembered the auristic escapade of the last day and thought: How long did I leave it on?

Long enough, it seemed.

Warned you The sarawanki came again, hovering above him now. Felt it when you obviously didn't. Obviously couldn't.

Hot anger rushed him, and his right arm -his still astral-occupied arm- felt around for something, and found something rough and hard and stony and his arm shot out and tried to make the sarawanki 'felt it'

And he felt it.

Or rather, as the pollywobber smashed into a sprinkle of oddly-solid liquids part, they felt it.

A sharp pain coursed through the entirety of Anton, and the entirety of Anton, mouth included, screamed for his Trickster god in the desert sun (teehee oots sic).

...

Some mistakes hurt.

Some mistakes hurt a lot.

A small elite selection of these mistakes cross your normal pain threshold straight into a night's stay at Krysus's exclusive inn of white-hot agony.

Welcome, dear Anton, to Krysus's exclusive inn of white-hot agony.

They just lay there for awhile: a shrieking boy and his pet reforming puddle, dealing with the afterwaves of being, for the lack of a universal word regarding this shared experience...

Discombobulated.

Utterly and completely discombobulated.

[Anton]

31st Fall, 512 AV

"You're whack!"

"I'm whack!"

"I'm whack!"

"You"re whack!"

"They're whack!" one wispy tendril pointed in the direction of Armond and his kirt.

"Everbody's whack!" the boy agreed, obviously.

"We're gonna have so much fun together! What's your favorite part of the body!"

"Mine's the appendix!"

"Mine's smoke!"

"Hooray!"

"let's be buddies!"

"Yes! Friends forever?"

"Friends forever! Nothing can stop us."

"The power of friendship!"

"Huh? I was talking about our indestructible smoke forms!"

"Oh. Nah, don't have that."

"Oh. THEN NOTHING CAN STOP ME. You just hide in a corner, okay?"

"OKAY."

"Okay," said Armond. "This farce has gone on long enough."

"Agreed," The Kirt said.

"I want this one, sir." urged Anton.

"You don't. You really don't."

"But his colors are pretty and he speaks the language of heroes."

And indeed, in the auristic spectrum, the Avavali was the smoke coming out of the fire given life. It shone black and green and yellow, and it was light and whimsy in one package, despite being smoke. Again, so vastly different from the other two, but yet somehow similar. He was starting to see a pattern of sorts now, between the arrogant pascids and the stone kirts and the wispy Avavali, that same core...something that defined them, that radiated from them in a way that defied their differing physiology. Was it...? No, not that. Something else...

"That, my boy, is the problem."

"Please?"

"No. Let's close the circle."

Sadface. "Bye tendril monster!"

"Bye!..Wait. No. NO BYES. COME BAC-"

[Anton]

32th Fall, 512 AV

You try to breathe even as you fade.

You try to breathe even as the tide comes in again and again, breaking against your banks, chipping away at that which is chippable. You try to breath even as you find yourself relearning the one lesson that you keep tossing aside: That the human will is not resolute, for pain is Her Gift and Her Gift is humility and tempered arrogance, and Her Gift teaches that those who succumb deserve to succumb and those who triumph will still bear Her scars through the brutality of the struggle. Her Gift is Her Gift, and all shall receive, and all shall be made whole or less by Her grace. Want the former? Want to start again? Breathe.

You try to breathe because anything else invited worse. You try to breathe even though you are suddenly and intensely aware that you have not tasted water in a day. You try to breathe even if your baked throat reflects that fact. You try to breath because it's what breathers do, just as workers work and bakers bake and legs do legwork and arms do armwor-

But your arm doesn't. Not now.

It feels raw and it feels numb and it feels a thousand of other things, but the one thing it doesn't feel like is working. And from that lack of an arm traces one thing to another...and the body becomes only one problem.

You can feel your magic. You stumbled and you fell, but that's your failing, not magic's, and it hasn't left you. Merely shifted a little to get out of the sun. It's right there. Within reach.

Waiting in the black.

And all you have to do is to extend your hand and seize it. What's wrong with the black, you ask? It's not the white, for starters, for white is the color of the desert sun and the burning desert sun and white is the color of stark agony and the things that make children scream.

But that's why you're breathing, yeah? One mouth, one activity, and you ain't screaming if you're breathing.

Let...let the black linger out there for a bit. It will still be there when there after the white fades. And perhaps it's the hope of an optimistic illusion...but the white fades a little more everytime you take a breath. And if it ain't real, all the better, just means the Trickster be sending a gift.

The white's been eating at you.

The white's been gnawing at nerves you didn't know you had.

The white's been finding ways to take you apart.

So maybe you should start biting back.

[Anton]

31st Fall, 512 AV

"I believe our interests are entwined. I want in and you want out. This cesspool is undeserving of me. My intellect, my skills and my will are wasted here, wasted in a place where each of my best qualities are turned to the purposes of savagery and the vilest, most debased forms of survival. I want safety and you want a companion, one that will never betray you, one that stands by your side all the way to the very end of the walking path. I am that being. Bind with me. Become one with me and we can be greater than the sum of our parts. Take me to your bright, new home and we can reign as GODS. What say you? Will you accept my gift to you and bring me to Fryden, Gordios?"

"..."

"I understand your apprehension, of course, but we really do not have much time."

"Is this a joke, Kirt? You think this is funny?" The darkness did not even deign to look at Anton, his attention passing flesh to address stone.

"Excessively so." came the response.

"We are suffering here, Kirt, and you mock us with this? You toy with hope for comfort?"

Anton raised a hand. "Oooh, oooh, I know the response." He cleared his throat, then summoned up the grittiest, loudest voice he could muster. ""YES."

"Pray I do not live to the day I bind."

"Wait, Gordios. We may have another candidate for you."

"The after-trick, Kirt?"

"No." The Kirt said "Okay, now yes. Bye now."

And the circle closed.

"He was all shimmery." said Anton.

"Sure."

But he was, came the mental pout.

[Anton]

32th Fall, 512 AV

"I am proposing a truce, pollywobber."

Contract was the truce. You broke it.

"Well, I'm unbreaking it now."

After nearly breaking us. Good to know working relationship based on pure, mutual necessity.

"The Kirt mage said Sarawanki are bubbly."

Sometimes bubble. Hot liquid core.

"The kirt mage said Sarawanki are llively."

Alive. Barely; your faul-

"Talkative?"

Am Talking.

"Emotional?"

Sun is white. Sky is Blue. Filling up with boundless Joy at mundane colors. Hooray. On topic of demeaning stereotypes: Humans said to be intelligent, resourceful, firstborn of Mizahar. Larger. You are none of the above.

"I am sorry I nearly killed you, Pollywobber."

Sorry you nearly killed you.

"The facts, then."

You are a treacherous, hairy specimen of below average size for your species.

"Pushing it, Pollywobber."

Gave facts. Didn't mention snide and reprehensible. Would have been opinions, albeit ones bordering on fact.

"Can we not work together in peace?"

Truce is about working together. Peace? Laughter.

"The facts."

Bound together. What happens to one happens to the other. Hurt begets hurt. Death begets death.

"And you're weak to blunt objects."

As compared to flesh's weakness to everything?

"You...oooh, found me arm."

Arm?

"Yes, arm."

You just grasped at nothing

"It's magic."

Mockery. Or not? You grasp water like us.

"Um, sure. Whatever. Let's get out of here."

Sigh. Agreed.

"This is the worst day ever."

[Anton]

31st Fall, 512 AV

What does a pollywobber mean?

"Type of fruit. An ale. Species of murderous rabbit roaming the underground. Four syllables. Nothing. Anything you want it or don't want it to be, really."

Applicability?

"Yes. Yes! Exactly!, Ser Pollywobber! That's the question we all ask: What do you want the bedeviled Pollywobber to be? Who are you? What do you want?"

It is custom our side do the persuading.

"Changing times! Changing times!"

More curious and curious.

"And it killed the cat."

Cat?

"Something I have."

An ailment of sorts?

"Only every tuesday. She's really not a bath gal. But we're digressing, so pretend I repeated my question."

You have family, human?

"Sort of."

How does one 'sort of' have a family?

"Come over and find out?"

Huh.

"You won't regret it."

What are you?

"I am the very model of-"

Of a sarawanki supremacist. Have that song here too.

"Oh, neat neat. I'm just a boy, Pollywobber, and I'm looking for a friend."

No relations to the other humans?

"Papa's papa. Bros be bros. Huntell be Huntell." Wait, lucidity. Wait. "And alone be alone. Doesn't matter who's around. Say yes."

Big decision.

"Small window of time. So choose."

Very well.

"Thumb promise."

Thumb promise?

"It's like a normal promise, only unbreakable."

Thumb promise then.

"Actual thumbs not necessary."

What's a thumb?

"Something fleshy. Armond, I found him!"

...

My name is Shin.

"Anton. This is the best day ever!"

Some drunken enchanted escapades are just more costly than others.

[Elysium]

Anton

Experience
Familiary +3
Auristics +2
Socialization +4
Rhetoric +2
Reimancy +1

Lore
Pollerwobber, the Sarawanki
Pascid: No Sense of Humor
How to "Kirt" Someone
Aurstics: The Auras of Familiars
Avavali Speak the Language of Heroes
Familiary: Shared Skills

Notes
This thread was fun, albeit a little hard to follow... Most times. I did get the gist of it though! And there was a lot of laughing out loud on my part, I'll grant you.