Alright. The only way I'm going to get past this is to write. So let's take a stab at this like I'd mentioned I might a few pages back. As with all such efforts, I but hope I have not made any significant 'canon-breaks' with my piece, and feel free to file it under dis-continuity if I have. Small snippet of most recent story used as a bridge section.
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A few days back...
Koorli watched as she always did. She watched and she waited. Every sight, every sound and scent and sensation were captured and cataloged in her mind. An oddly distorted whistling sound wound its way across the valley.
"What are you about?"
"Half-mast! Half-past! Too vast!"
Koorli considered his lunatic linguistics as he continued that odd whistling sound, seeming to come from random spots in the valley in no discernable order. She decided to humour him - and perhaps herself.
"And what do you see?"
"Broken coda, broken measure, bleeding moon, weeping treasure."
"[COLOR="Indigo"]It does not matter."
"Wil go now, may go later, gone was I, aber spater."
"You're leaving?" A touch of surprise and perhaps unexpected emotion in her voice. For two hundred years, she'd had to put up with his lunacy. It had driven her to distraction - and perhaps kept her sane by keeping her from focusing too much. His mind wasn't like the others'; when he'd entered the valley, she'd felt it, of course, but it was like probing a lake made of gently steaming chicken broth; there was information there, but it was so scattered and unrelated one thing to the next that it had proven of little use. And now, she had, for the first time in two centuries, the prospect of a morning without that odd but strangely comforting 'mental steam' to dip her fingers in.
"Dead they dance, dark romance, shifting changer in my glance. Boy-man-god, girl-boy-slave, girl-woman-change, cat-cat-cat."
He was suddenly in front of her, unnervingly close as he spat out the next lines, "All together none united. To the stone ever-blighted." Then he leaned in and kissed her firm upon the lips ... and seemed to dissolve; like a Cheshire Cat, till all that was left was those lips pressed to her own .. and at the last, they went too.
Koorli was, for perhaps the first time in centuries, stunned.
...
Days later ...
A remote village. At its heart, a maelstrom of death, walking and still. Torsos bisected; limbs lopped. Blood and viscera. A trio of humanoids falling beneath a tide of putrescent dead. Then everything stopped. Literally. Every single undead stopped dead in their tracks and fell over, dead…again.
The three found one another again, speaking amongst themselves, ascertaining their individual states of health.
“Why would they just drop dead like that?” Serpentine asked aloud, “They had us, I thought we were going to die…”
Mi’ir snorted, “The Dead Queen was sending a message, I suppose. Leave or die.” She extricated herself from the pile of corpses. “Still think that you need to deliver me first?”
Mordokai shook as much dead blood as he could off of his sword. “Nope. I think we need to pay the Queen a visit…”
A voice whispered on the wind.
"Falling, ever falling down. Dead they danced, dark romance, shifting changer in my glance."
Mordokai was wary, his blade once more to hand. Mi'ir looked around, uncertain, and not particularly looking forward to the prospect of fighting more intelligent undead. Serpentine's expression was distracted, a bit sallow as the voice seemed to resonate with something she could not quite place ... like something out of a fever-dream.
"Show yourself," the Redeemer barked.
"Gods' gelding greets gravely," came the soft sing-song staccato reply.
"Oh, well done indeed," Mi'ir hissed under her breath.
"Bard banter be bitter brew..."
"Dark coney stew and stewed ...
Serpentine spoke softly, cutting across the rhythm. "Why?"
Silence. Then a soft, almost child-like giggle.
"We like to play with children. So bright, so shining, dancing on the lip of possibility, no-one to tell them what they can't do. Won't do, no do ... do de do do do. Have you found your question yet? A wager, a caper, a coney, a catch."
Finally, he came into view, scrambling over one of the corpses, clutching one of its' eyes in his left hand. "I wanted to see like the elves ... but it takes more than their eyes. If you would catch the coney, you, too, must hold its ... eye," and he spearheaded the point by tossing the eye at Serpentine. She caught it, more out of reflex than anything else, then let out a shriek as it seemed to squirm in her hand, then dropped to the dark soil beneath.
He regarded Mi'ir with an angelic smile, tilting his head to one side. "Will you kill the moon to spite the tides - oh, don't tell me, don't tell me, the surprise ... SURPRISE," he screamed the last, and trundled off to the edge of the field of corpses.
Mordokai sighed. "We should press on. This lunatic offers us no aid that we can decipher." Mi'ir nodded absently.
Serpentine shook her head from side to side slightly, then her face lit up in recollection. "Helgraf?"
"The name's the thing, the thing's the play. I like to play with my things. Has the fledgling found its wings?"
Serpentine's expression flushed briefly. "A little..."
Mi'ir regarded Serpentine oddly. "You can make some sense of his ramblings?"
A brief nod in the affirmative was all the reply she gave. Mordokai shook his head as they continued to waste time with the village lunatic.
"Too far, gone, too near, gone. Ride the cusp it flows upon." He then turned to regard Mordokai. "Answers seek, I give ye none. Begger wastrel on the run. Twofold killers would strike you down; held restrained by thread of crown. Tarry, marry, and wizened words whisperer will I woof and warp whenceforth without."
He paused, then looked at something high in the sky.
"Ware the coney's eye!"
Agggh. I don't know. I don't know.
Originally Posted by Helgraf
Alright. The only way I'm going to get past this is to write. So let's take a stab at this like I'd mentioned I might a few pages back. As with all such efforts, I but hope I have not made any significant 'canon-breaks' with my piece, and feel free to file it under dis-continuity if I have. Small snippet of most recent story used as a bridge section.
Re: Shippingitp IV: Flattery Will Get You EVERYWHERE
*reads*
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