The underneath is a network of sewers and cold basement levels, filled with the stench of mildew and death. You hear sounds - at a distance, and nearby. Like many legs in the dripping water, like soft voices echoing down the halls.
More notably, no matter how you got here, you can't seem to get back out. However you arrived, it's a one-way entry, and there seems to be strong magical warding stopping anything from leaving.
Are these the dungeons? Or was your arrival here a mistake?
THIS IS A SECRET LOG! THIS MEANS THAT ALL CONTENT INSIDE OF IT IS SECRET BOTH IC AND OOC UNTIL YOUR CHARACTER IS ONCE AGAIN IN A PLACE WHERE THEY CAN REVEAL IT!
It's okay to make vague commentary on how things are going for your character, but please don't tell anyone OOCly the specifics of the location, characters, or events. That's for you and anyone else who joins you to share.
Start with your character arriving, and things will go from there.
That the spider-mannequin has apparently lived for this long probably means they've eaten people too, he notes. This could be a trap. If this really is for the long run he's definitely not going to last long after his supplies run dry. Leaving aside his bone-deep reluctance to actually hurt anything, his body is mostly a giant pigeon. Not suited to living on raw meat, and he's carrying hundreds of pounds of muscle. Ugh.
"Sure, Reira." He uses his beak to indicate where he wants a portal to form, down low where she can reach, and opens it and thinks of several items. Street food in plastic baggies mostly, and bottled water. "Just reach in. You can get it as we go. Uh, you want anything?" He's addressing the figure they're following. "If it is going to go bad, I've got a lot to unload."
No packs of blood, though, if that's their game. He's not that well prepared.
"Why not?" they say to Julien, with a bit of a laugh. "Who knows when the opportunity to eat real food will arrive again - though I wouldn't want to grow used to it."
Beyond that, though, they remain mostly focused on Reira's questions. They certainly don't seem to mind sharing what they know.
"There are plenty of rules that the butler could break," they explain. "And doing so could bear a far greater weight, with the influence they have over the other servants. It did in my case. No matter your position, the Prince does not abide by those who go against his word. That was never our purpose, and thinking otherwise would be foolish."
Ahh. Well, that at least confirms that they're all more or less here for the 'same thing'. Even if 'all is only them, so far. The girl pulls out some food baggies, passing one to the woman with a nod.
"...The poison ruins things but... ...You said people 'lost themselves'. ...That means the poison didn't kill them right? It just ruined everything else." That's at least what she understands? It's a little odd to think of poison as being so specific. Rotting the food, but leaving people alive? Strange. "...I guess Sparrow will be ok..."
Said sparrow gives a tiny 'peep!', ruffling herself out from Reira's hair again. No pulse, no need to eat....She'll be fine. Maybe.
Hot dog in a bun, either one slathered with mustard and onion and pickle relish or slapped with chili and covered in cheese, either kind has made a mess of the inside of the bag but is still very warm and intact. For a moment it's enough to block out the smell of this place. All right, Julien will have to eat something too.
'His' word, Julien notices, not 'their' word. Obedience, not holding to promises. Well, it's not like he hadn't twigged to how sinister this whole thing was before now.
That sparrow is creepy but he keeps that to himself. When compared to everything else, it's just not worth even reacting to. "And why are you telling us all this? Aren't we just..." Fresh meat? "Competition, since it's so rough here?"
"No, the poison won't deteriorate living flesh," they clarify. "Once a body has died, the meat with be fresh only at first. From that point forward, it will gradually become infected with the poison's disease. At first, it will pass for food but make you sick... later, it will become entirely inedible. I expect the same will happen to the food you've brought, as well as any clothing or belongings. Though, inorganic matter tends to hold together longer."
Which you can see a bit of by the fact that what passes for their skirt is still in one piece, though it looks like it must smell very bad. The being will accept the baggies from Reira with a grateful nod, though without the desperation you might expect from someone in this situation. Reira will still feel their ambient anticipation and excitement, however, even if it doesn't show on the surface.
They turn to look at Julien for a moment, something sharp in their eye.
"It does seem set up that way, doesn't it? To corrupt our bodies and minds, while simultaneously using desperate hunger to make what food remains a precious commodity."
That excitement is so strange, truly. Reira herself seems relieved, at least, to hear that inorganic things hold together. "...Foster made the Sparrow alive again, but...not hungry, so I hope it works then..." The tiny bird is sort of in an awkward grey area, she supposes. Oh well.
She glances at the skirt, and then to her disk. "...My duel disk will stay on then, at least...since it's all light and metal and things. But..." This is starting to feel very strange.
"....Why are you excited?" She can't keep it to herself any more, and while she keeps following, she stares quite deliberately up to the woman, as if waiting. "....It feels like you're waiting for something, and you're excited.... ....but I can't figure out why."
Julien's covered in feathers, which are technically dead, but the ex-butler's hair seems to still be, well, existent, and hair is even more dead than feathers. Well. He's not holding out hope.
His neck stretches out as the spider mannequin turns towards him with that look on their face. Reira's brought up excitement and he believes it. With bird body language, the longer his neck is and the closer his feathers are to his skin the more fearful he is, and that's certainly a thing too. Bird body language doesn't include a smattering of phantom eyes appearing at the same time, of course.
He's in no position to make demands. "You may as well tell us."
They pause for a moment, stopping in their footsteps. Their eyes linger on the two of them for a few moments, the expression hard to read, their head slightly tilting. There is no fear in them.
Then, finally, their tension breaks with a snort. They lift up the baggie of food.
"Well, you just gave me this, didn't you? Do you suppose this is something I get frequently?"
The child has a rather stiff look in her eyes, with that answer. That can't be it, because the feeling came before she mentioned food....but people lie for reasons. Sometimes bad ones.
Mostly bad ones, really, she finds herself thinking, but for now the child lets it slide. Julien can, at the least, no doubt see that his charge doesn't believe the woman.
"....I guess that's a good thing to be excited about. ....I'm still learning what lots of foods are, but most of them were good so far." But just...how much farther are they to go? And where? And what lies at the end of it? Will she feel more emotions creeping inward as they get near?
....will it be anything good, that's the better question....
Julien would've been surprised if there had been fear of them. Reira's an undersized seven year old and Julien looks like a giant pigeon. They're both not as easy prey as they might look, but they definitely don't look like much.
Good to see Reira's more wary now, anyway. Fleetingly Julien wishes he still had his dæmon, but then again Julie might have blurted all kinds of things by now. Maybe not. This isn't like saying mildly embarrassing things in a friendly setting.
"Best hot dogs in Detroit, no one gets those often enough even if they live there," he says lightly, as if he buys that as an explanation. "Are we going anywhere in particular, or is it just better to keep moving down here?"
They will happily accept that, offering a strange smile before continuing down the passageway. They'll keep speaking as they walk.
"We're going to my living space. It will avoid the chance of any sudden attacks, and my belongings are there. It will easier for you to rest when required, as opposed to having to form a shelter for yourself."
"Some of those down here are still friendly, but some are now only hungry for meat. It's... unfortunate."
Unfortunate indeed-and she certainly couldn't say if the woman wasn't telling the truth, given the feelings the had been avoiding. "...Thank you," she says honestly-some shelter, after all, is nothing to turn down. "...Do you know the other friendly people?" How close are they, is something she wants to ask, but pulling an 'are we there yet' seems rather rude.
Welcome to my parlor, said the spider to the fly. Julien almost says it under his breath, but he's pretty sure Reira wouldn't get it. Well, if it's their lair maybe that means they'll be the only one there. If it's not, chances are they'd stalk these two, or else they'd come across someone who doesn't even pretend to be helpful and civil.
He nods with his companion's thanks. "I can distribute more of what I've got, if that buys any time." As not-dinner to whoever. With a little pang of despair he realizes he's probably going to have to start selling himself as more delicious than Reira.
"I do," they say. "There's at least one other in this area. How the two of us have retained our sanity this long, I'm not sure. I've always suspected that it was because I had my own magical gifts."
"It would be kind of you to share when otherwise it will go to waste," they say to Julien, frankly. "I doubt the ones that are truly far gone will even recognize this as food at this point, but for the ones that do..."
"What kind of gifts?" she finds herself wondering. Her daemon, after all, still floats around as a ghostly fragment of her 'imagination'...but would such a thing count? Could empathy count? Julien was probably 'super magic', so how would he fare?
The gold dust that comes from her hair trails a bit while they go, and she ponders what to ask. "....If someone is hungry, how come they would have to realize it's food? ...Food has smells, right?"
Ah, good. Well, if he does lose his mind and decide to attack people, he's too big and air-adapted to be very good at it here. Really even if he does have enough food and water to keep himself and the kid going for a long time, he's just not going to last long. Julien has reached the point where things are almost funny, in a dull way. This is ridiculous. He wishes he could reject it.
"If they've been living on other people dumped down into here for so long, they might not know anything else is food. Even the meat I've got is cooked..." He pauses, sorts through his awareness of the things he's carrying. Something seems very subtly off about it, but he can't quite tell what, he hasn't been down here long enough for it to really be affected. "Most of it. I have some pork chops and chicken nuggets from way back when. But those aren't bloody, let alone alive, so they might not register."
He nods at the spider-mannequin, feeling subdued. "Yeah. Might as well spread a little kindness. Tell me when, all right?"
They nod, confirming Julien's explanation of it as they cast Reira a glance.
"They have come to recognize things that were recently living as a sign that the food will not make them ill. I'm sure that they could be convinced to try eating it with exposure, but the trouble is that they'd likely be more interested in killing you than experimenting with new flavours."
They fall silent for a few moments, before speaking again.
"For your own sakes, I hope that your stay is not permanent. It is not often that the Prince has guests, so I have little experience to speak from regarding your prognosis."
"Mhhnnn..." Well....that's a little more disappointing then. "....If the Ringmaster doesn't make a bargain though, that means we're stuck, doesn't it." She HAD asked about that, after all.
"Sounds like. I'm assuming there's not usually a way out." Well, he supposes they might not want to take it if it just led back to the Prince, but even so, if there was any passage between here and back aboveground he'd expect things to be a little less miserable than they sound.
"I'd really like to give a speech about getting everyone to freedom somehow. You can pretend I just did," he notes in a dry tone. Julien will look into options, but he knows the limits of his powers, and that they're so cut off that he has no perception of his other body makes those limits rather stricter. "Is there a name for this place? What should we call you?"
"It was a very good speech," they purr, their lip curling a little. "As for this place, we call it the underbelly. As for myself... any true names I had have been taken from me, but you can refer to me as Curse."
"Reira, don't. People can call themselves whatever they want. I had a friend who went by Roadblock. Sometimes it works out like that." He'd never asked Roadblock why he'd decided to be known by Roadblock. Maybe it was just because he was big? Regrets, anyway, inane and distant regrets.
They respect the sentiment Julien, but it's a bit more complicated than that, apparently.
"Chosen names can certainly be true, but once your names have been taken as mine has, no other name will ever feel 'right' again. You will never have true possession over a name until the day that they are returned to you. Even as you may call me 'Curse', it will never fully feel like a name that belongs to me. Neither to you, or to me."
Reira ponders those words for a number of moments-and thinks of her Daemon's own words, when they refused to take a name themselves.
Eventually, she just looks ahead, continuing to walk.
"....Is it okay to not use any name? And just talk instead?" she asks quietly. If a name does not feel right, it doesn't feel right to use it. That's all she can think, to this.
"....How do you get a name back, when it's taken?"
After a pause - and that's right, 'Curse' doesn't really seem to fit them, that's all really weird - Julien just says. "That seriously sucks."
They've been walking for a while. Shifting his path so he walks nearer to a wall Julien stretches out his wing, part of the way. There's not space for full extension this way but there's enough to say that yes, he's in better condition now. Bringing up his inventory again he selects more things to break down.
He could start building another human body now, he thinks. It'd take quite a while before it was something that could survive and be used though, longer than he suspects he has. Maybe if he'd been with the elder champions for longer they could have taught him about making smaller, simpler peripherals.
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lostchance) wrote2017-10-06 10:01 pm
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That the spider-mannequin has apparently lived for this long probably means they've eaten people too, he notes. This could be a trap. If this really is for the long run he's definitely not going to last long after his supplies run dry. Leaving aside his bone-deep reluctance to actually hurt anything, his body is mostly a giant pigeon. Not suited to living on raw meat, and he's carrying hundreds of pounds of muscle. Ugh.
"Sure, Reira." He uses his beak to indicate where he wants a portal to form, down low where she can reach, and opens it and thinks of several items. Street food in plastic baggies mostly, and bottled water. "Just reach in. You can get it as we go. Uh, you want anything?" He's addressing the figure they're following. "If it is going to go bad, I've got a lot to unload."
No packs of blood, though, if that's their game. He's not that well prepared.
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Beyond that, though, they remain mostly focused on Reira's questions. They certainly don't seem to mind sharing what they know.
"There are plenty of rules that the butler could break," they explain. "And doing so could bear a far greater weight, with the influence they have over the other servants. It did in my case. No matter your position, the Prince does not abide by those who go against his word. That was never our purpose, and thinking otherwise would be foolish."
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"...The poison ruins things but... ...You said people 'lost themselves'. ...That means the poison didn't kill them right? It just ruined everything else." That's at least what she understands? It's a little odd to think of poison as being so specific. Rotting the food, but leaving people alive? Strange. "...I guess Sparrow will be ok..."
Said sparrow gives a tiny 'peep!', ruffling herself out from Reira's hair again. No pulse, no need to eat....She'll be fine. Maybe.
Maybe?
Ah. "....Where are we going?"
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'His' word, Julien notices, not 'their' word. Obedience, not holding to promises. Well, it's not like he hadn't twigged to how sinister this whole thing was before now.
That sparrow is creepy but he keeps that to himself. When compared to everything else, it's just not worth even reacting to. "And why are you telling us all this? Aren't we just..." Fresh meat? "Competition, since it's so rough here?"
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Which you can see a bit of by the fact that what passes for their skirt is still in one piece, though it looks like it must smell very bad. The being will accept the baggies from Reira with a grateful nod, though without the desperation you might expect from someone in this situation. Reira will still feel their ambient anticipation and excitement, however, even if it doesn't show on the surface.
They turn to look at Julien for a moment, something sharp in their eye.
"It does seem set up that way, doesn't it? To corrupt our bodies and minds, while simultaneously using desperate hunger to make what food remains a precious commodity."
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She glances at the skirt, and then to her disk. "...My duel disk will stay on then, at least...since it's all light and metal and things. But..." This is starting to feel very strange.
"....Why are you excited?" She can't keep it to herself any more, and while she keeps following, she stares quite deliberately up to the woman, as if waiting. "....It feels like you're waiting for something, and you're excited.... ....but I can't figure out why."
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His neck stretches out as the spider mannequin turns towards him with that look on their face. Reira's brought up excitement and he believes it. With bird body language, the longer his neck is and the closer his feathers are to his skin the more fearful he is, and that's certainly a thing too. Bird body language doesn't include a smattering of phantom eyes appearing at the same time, of course.
He's in no position to make demands. "You may as well tell us."
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Then, finally, their tension breaks with a snort. They lift up the baggie of food.
"Well, you just gave me this, didn't you? Do you suppose this is something I get frequently?"
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Mostly bad ones, really, she finds herself thinking, but for now the child lets it slide. Julien can, at the least, no doubt see that his charge doesn't believe the woman.
"....I guess that's a good thing to be excited about. ....I'm still learning what lots of foods are, but most of them were good so far." But just...how much farther are they to go? And where? And what lies at the end of it? Will she feel more emotions creeping inward as they get near?
....will it be anything good, that's the better question....
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Good to see Reira's more wary now, anyway. Fleetingly Julien wishes he still had his dæmon, but then again Julie might have blurted all kinds of things by now. Maybe not. This isn't like saying mildly embarrassing things in a friendly setting.
"Best hot dogs in Detroit, no one gets those often enough even if they live there," he says lightly, as if he buys that as an explanation. "Are we going anywhere in particular, or is it just better to keep moving down here?"
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"We're going to my living space. It will avoid the chance of any sudden attacks, and my belongings are there. It will easier for you to rest when required, as opposed to having to form a shelter for yourself."
"Some of those down here are still friendly, but some are now only hungry for meat. It's... unfortunate."
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He nods with his companion's thanks. "I can distribute more of what I've got, if that buys any time." As not-dinner to whoever. With a little pang of despair he realizes he's probably going to have to start selling himself as more delicious than Reira.
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"It would be kind of you to share when otherwise it will go to waste," they say to Julien, frankly. "I doubt the ones that are truly far gone will even recognize this as food at this point, but for the ones that do..."
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The gold dust that comes from her hair trails a bit while they go, and she ponders what to ask. "....If someone is hungry, how come they would have to realize it's food? ...Food has smells, right?"
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"If they've been living on other people dumped down into here for so long, they might not know anything else is food. Even the meat I've got is cooked..." He pauses, sorts through his awareness of the things he's carrying. Something seems very subtly off about it, but he can't quite tell what, he hasn't been down here long enough for it to really be affected. "Most of it. I have some pork chops and chicken nuggets from way back when. But those aren't bloody, let alone alive, so they might not register."
He nods at the spider-mannequin, feeling subdued. "Yeah. Might as well spread a little kindness. Tell me when, all right?"
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"They have come to recognize things that were recently living as a sign that the food will not make them ill. I'm sure that they could be convinced to try eating it with exposure, but the trouble is that they'd likely be more interested in killing you than experimenting with new flavours."
They fall silent for a few moments, before speaking again.
"For your own sakes, I hope that your stay is not permanent. It is not often that the Prince has guests, so I have little experience to speak from regarding your prognosis."
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She doesn't see there being no reason for it.
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"I'd really like to give a speech about getting everyone to freedom somehow. You can pretend I just did," he notes in a dry tone. Julien will look into options, but he knows the limits of his powers, and that they're so cut off that he has no perception of his other body makes those limits rather stricter. "Is there a name for this place? What should we call you?"
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But also- "....Did you make the name yourself? ....Does picking a name make it different from a true name?"
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"Chosen names can certainly be true, but once your names have been taken as mine has, no other name will ever feel 'right' again. You will never have true possession over a name until the day that they are returned to you. Even as you may call me 'Curse', it will never fully feel like a name that belongs to me. Neither to you, or to me."
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Eventually, she just looks ahead, continuing to walk.
"....Is it okay to not use any name? And just talk instead?" she asks quietly. If a name does not feel right, it doesn't feel right to use it. That's all she can think, to this.
"....How do you get a name back, when it's taken?"
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They've been walking for a while. Shifting his path so he walks nearer to a wall Julien stretches out his wing, part of the way. There's not space for full extension this way but there's enough to say that yes, he's in better condition now. Bringing up his inventory again he selects more things to break down.
He could start building another human body now, he thinks. It'd take quite a while before it was something that could survive and be used though, longer than he suspects he has. Maybe if he'd been with the elder champions for longer they could have taught him about making smaller, simpler peripherals.
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