Riverside 16: Turn and face the strain

[Gullara]

Suncrest Strangeness

"Iunno, you're the boss. Do whatever you want." Says a particularly lazy and lackadaisical lampades, lounging against the gates and buffing her nails.

"Wouldn't be the first time we've been bound to the whims of an insane master." Oddly enough, the youngling who speaks up isn't even talking about Hecate. They were lost in a poker game to Hades to serve him for a week, and it was honestly the most fun week of their life before Persephone made him give them back when she came home for the winter.

"If you want, we can find you a sedan chair and some peeled grapes. Not sure where we'd get palm fronds around here though."

[Suncrest Strangeness]

"Um, okay, how about this." Eliseo begins uncertainly. "How about you just suggest some handmaiden things you do and, I dunno, we can try it out? Because I really have no idea."

[Slii Arhem]

Northside Street

The wall makes a long, rude squelching sound as Krayger's finger penetrates its brick-like facade and is wrapped in a warm, tingly embrace around its tip. It moves, slightly, and a pinkish tinted haze might start to creep into the edges of Krayger's vision.

[Deathkeeper]

Northside Street

Oh, dear. That doesn't seem good at all. Krayger tries to withdraw his finger, his common sense overriding his curiosity. If he can, he'll start to walk away and around the building. Maybe there's a sign on the other sides of it that'll explain why it doesn't appear to be actually solid. And if not he can just walk away.

[Slii Arhem]

Northside Street

It comes away distressingly damp, not quite like it was covered in spit, but the comparison's definitely a close one. Around the front of the building it seems in disrepair, the sign for an old alchemy shop hammered over an even older exotic pet store sign, both of which hanging low on one side, partially covering the otherwise open door. It's just an open space, but why remains to be seen.

[Deathkeeper]

Northside Street

Krayger frowns. Oh, dear. That's...horribly stereotypical. Still, he is supposed to be keeping the peace here. He wipes of his hand with a rag, and then takes out a long wooden staff from his bag, using that to poke at the front wall to see if it has the same properties of the back wall. He doesn't seem to have noticed the strange effect on his vision.

[Slii Arhem]

Northside Street

Krayger frowns. Oh, dear. That's...horribly stereotypical. Still, he is supposed to be keeping the peace here. He wipes of his hand with a rag, and then takes out a long wooden staff from his bag, using that to poke at the front wall to see if it has the same properties of the back wall. He doesn't seem to have noticed the strange effect on his vision.

Northside Street

The stick sinks in a bit, before a small, round maw forms around it and grips it lightly, shaking the staff from side to side in a very gentle attempt to wrest it from his grasp.

Gentle for an entity the size of an entire building, anyway. Hard to say whether Krayger finds it such, though he is bigger and more muscular than most people that might play "tug of war" with whatever this is.

[Deathkeeper]

Northside Street

Krayger grimaces, gripping the staff with both hands in an attempt to wrench it back. A mouth? Yeah, he's out of here. The second he gets this stick back, he's gone. He's not looking around a living building.

[Slii Arhem]

[Suncrest Strangeness]

"Um, okay, how about this." Eliseo begins uncertainly. "How about you just suggest some handmaiden things you do and, I dunno, we can try it out? Because I really have no idea."

Suncrest Strangeness

A gloomy girl about his age with dark, almost raven-coloured blue hair responds, "Tell us to go get something you want, or do something you're too busy for or don't want to bother with. We can teach you things or massage you or change or wash your clothes or pester your enemies and entertain your friends and cook and clean and guard and feed you, find you pets and shiny things and dig for treasure and build you stuff and make music and art and tell stories and write your diary entries and repair your broken stuff or just throw it out and get you stuff that won't break next time." Her voice is utterly monotone, and then Eliseo realizes that even though he got the impression she was the one speaking, her face didn't move at all while the words echoed around the yard.

Northside Street

Krayger grimaces, gripping the staff with both hands in an attempt to wrench it back. A mouth? Yeah, he's out of here. The second he gets this stick back, he's gone. He's not looking around a living building.

Northside Street

The building makes a deep, sedimentary rumble reminiscent of a growl as the staff, slightly chewed and moist, is pulled from its mouth. As the mouth is quickly absorbed back into the thing, it shudders and shakes, inching towards him with lurching movements that crack the pavement and make several sharp snaps of false brick, combining together in a whining creak of motion where there should be none.

[Deathkeeper]

Northside Street

Krayger looks down at the cracking pavement.
He looks up at the building.
Back down at the pavement.
Up again.

Krayger turns one hundred and eighty degrees and starts to run, a somewhat slow run since the minotaur is built for endurance, not speed, but a run nonetheless. Like hell is he standing here if this thing is mobile.

[Slii Arhem]

Northside Street

It's definitely mobile, but not that mobile. If Krayger moves faster than your regular old shambling undead, he'll get out of range just fine.

The building, if he cares to look back, will settle back on its foundation as soon as he gets far enough away. Hard to say what's happening from a distance, but it does seem to keep shuddering and moving, not making any effort to hide its abnormalities.

[Deathkeeper]

Northside Street

A block and a half away, Krayger is content to stop and look back, relaxing as he sees that his escape was successful. This is just odd. What the hell is that thing, and why is it that no one seems to have not noticed or reacted to the shuddering building? Krayger is curious, and again, it's his job to keep these folks safe, so instead of leaving and reporting it just yet, he takes out some binoculars and peers at the building's odd movement, trying to get some info if possible.

[Slii Arhem]

Northside Street

The shuddering seems to be bringing it slowly lower to the ground, as it compresses in on itself, bricklike facade wrinkling and cracking under the strain of whatever internal goop comprises the entity. A bit more observation reveals that he can see the roof from this angle now, despite it being flat, which means that it's compressing more at the front than at the back where he originally leaned against it.

[Deathkeeper]

Northside Street

Krayger grunts his frustration. Is it adapting to a new shape for some reason? Is it just frustrated that he left and moving around? What is it doing? He stands there for a bit longer, watching its strange behavior.

[Slii Arhem]

Northside Street

And then, the entire thing unbunches quite suddenly, ripping itself violently from the foundation and surrounding sidewalks, scattering ashphalt and brickwork across the whole block as it gives a mighty leap. One that swiftly eclipses his position with a huge rectangular shadow as its arc hurtles towards him like a meteor. He can see the inside of the building through his binoculars for a moment in improbably stark clarity as time seems to slow in the face of looming danger, dusty and covered in shelves lining the walls, still stocked with grimy bottles sloshing with various colours and viscosities of fluids.

He's got a few moments to decide what to do before the floorless mass of cohesive rubble comes crashing down. Based on its arc, it will either fall just short of landing on him or hit him dead on. At this point, it's quite hard to judge.

[Deathkeeper]

Northside Street

Krayger takes precious time to stand back up and look at the building's shadow to see which way is shorter, and runs that way.
As been mentioned, he has far more endurance than speed, particularly on hard concrete that his hooves aren't designed for. He runs, but if the building jumped low and fast enough, it may be able to land on him.

Hopefully if it does its gooey consistency will be soft enough to not break every bone in his body.

[Slii Arhem]

Northside Street

Forwards, towards the shop's original position, is the shorter distance, but the moments he took to judge that make it much less likely a sure thing. However, the building's trajectory takes it to a point where, at the rate Krayger's running, it lands around him rather than on him, leaving the back wall shuddering directly in front of his face as he builds up speed.

Needless to say, as some glassware falls off the shelves and the roof bows and quivers overhead, this might cause a bit of an impact if he doesn't stop in time.

[Deathkeeper]

Northside Street

((there are italic buttons for forum posts, Slii ))

Krayger lets out a hoarse cry from his mouth, actually getting close to panic, and attempts to skid to a halt. However, unless the floor has the wall's putty-like consistency without the right texture for the floors the way the walls mimic brick, his hooves simply aren't made for fast stops, especially on hard surfaces.
The best he can do before ramming into the quivering wall is turn a bit, so his shoulder will hit it first instead of hitting the wall muzzle-first.

[Slii Arhem]

Northside "Street"

The building's floor is not nonexistent, having been left behind when it leapt, but its wall is still very substantial, and very squishy as Krayger runs into it.

The next thing he feels, though, is the place beginning to settle in around him and a long, damp, full-body sliding sensation of the wall against his front and side, leaving him with the distinct impression the thing just licked him through its wallpaper.

[Deathkeeper]

Northside Street, With Most of a Building On Top

Krayger would groan, but he doesn't want to open his mouth with half of it still in contact with the nasty, damp wall.
The minotaur tries to turn and plant his other arm against the squishy wall so he can use it to push himself away and out of the elastic surface, as the way his body fell into it he's not in the best angle or position to do so well with his foot.

[Slii Arhem]

Northside Street, Now with Roadblock

The building lets him go fairly easily, its wall settling back properly upright and solid again, slight tears in its wallpaper made by his impact repairing themselves even as the bricks of the outside knit back together as well. The place is actually fairly clean now, all of the dust having been shaken onto the cracked and devastated pavement beneath his feet, and looks better than it ever did from the outside.

There are plenty of vials, labels worn by the passing of time, and only the empty ones seem to have fallen and broken. There's also a counter attached to the wall a few feet to his left, on which sit various tools of the alchemist's trade and manuscripts, including a thin, black volume with no words on the cover.

[Deathkeeper]

Northside "Roadblock"

Krayger staggers out of the wall, taking out a towel to wipe himself off. Again.
And oh boy, he's surrounded by alchemical fluids of unknown purpose and origin. Just his favorite environment. With a groan, he goes over to examine the small book. Usually unlabeled ones in places like this would be personal ones, not manuals like the rest.

[Slii Arhem]

Northside Roadblock

The journal certainly is personal, detailing the incomprehensible, mad, compressed scribblings of an alchemist known only as Asmo. It's written in a tiny, cramped script in a cipher or language Krayger will not be able to understand, but on the very last page there are ten words in every language the author could think of, trying to get across a very important concept to the reader no matter the language barrier. There are even crude pictograms for those iliterate sorts.

"I've figured it out, it's your problem now. Signed Asmo." Isn't that nice?

Around him, the store rumbles slightly, just barely audible as its walls shudder.

[Deathkeeper]

Northside Roadblock

Krayger ignores the rumbling for now, and takes out a pair of spectacles from his bag. They're magically enchanted to make script seen with them legible, if language or code is the barrier. That being said, if the handwriting is bad enough they won't do a thing to help Krayger get more clues.

[Slii Arhem]

Northside Roadblock

Nope, sorry Krayger. While the spectacles do make it legible, it does not reveal the author's intent. It's clearly either written in such a way that only the madman who penned it could decipher what he meant, or it's a cipher that not even magical spectacles can crack, probably self-made by Asmo.

The only thing understandable as more than a complicated chemical formula or strange unassociated words without any real pattern is the last page. Meanwhile, the rumbling gets louder and bassier as it begins to harmonize with itself, gaining a strange musical quality to it as it shifts between the deeper octaves.

[Deathkeeper]

Northside Roadblock

Krayger sighs, dropping the book onto the counter in disgust. He slips the spectacles back into his bag, and looks up at the rumbling's crescendo.
"Oh gods what are you doing now?" he mutters out loud, looking around. There's not much he thinks he can do. There's no other books around that seems to be more than alchemical notes he'll never understand, and unless there's a few potions that look promising without their labels (or just still have their labels) there's really nothing for him here. He doesn't think it will work, but that front door is looking really nice right about now...

[Slii Arhem]

Northside Roadblock

All of the potions look promising, without their layer of dust they've been evidently well preserved and kept, though all of the labels are in some way damaged or faded, so further inspection under a proper magnifying glass might be better to reveal their nature.

But as he walks through the door, the shop rubs its frame up against him eagerly, and he might have a sudden epiphany about the rumbling.

If you scaled up a cat to roughly a thousand times its size and mass, this is what its purr might sound like. When he's outside, if he decides to walk away from the building, he'll find it follows along behind him, chewing the pavement up slightly as it scooches along the wide road.

[Deathkeeper]

Northside Roadblock

Krayger has never owned a cat, but he has already figured that the building seems to have some sort of animal intelligence. He was thinking a dog more, though, since cats don't lick as much. Or at least he didn't think they did. As was said, he's never owned one.

And now it's following him. Gods, no. He can't reasonably leave with this thing in tow, or it'll wreck whole city blocks. And just because he could feasibly get away by getting on a train, he can't risk it smashing the place in an effort to follow him.

Krayger fetches a magnifying glass from his bag, desperate to find something he can use. If the place is technically living, he might be able to use one of these potions. Maybe there's one that can shrink it down to manageable size for him, or turn it into something else.

[Slii Arhem]

Krayger's Shop, Krayger's Shop of Horrors

As he sorts through the potions (bone setter, wound sealant, dire rat poison, topical burn heal, hormonal supplement kits, muscle builder, weight loss pills made of cork that are roughly four inches wide and come with handy gag straps) the building sidles up to him and nuzzles (what else would you call it?) his arm. By sheer necessity, this also involves nuzzling his entire front with its rough, bricklike surface.

However, as if in response to his desire to find something useful to get it out of here, the place is noticeably beginning to shrink. It's not a quick process, nothing the thing does seems to be quick, but it doesn't take a genius to know that it's responding directly to his will in some fashion.

[Deathkeeper]

Krayger's Shop of Horrors

Krayger takes some of the more useful healing potions, and even the muscle builder. Though if he was willing to use a cheat like that, he'd probably need evidence that the rest of the potions work without any complications.

He looks up and the ceiling looks much lower than it did before, and he hastily makes an exit before it starts brushing the tips of his horns.
"Well, smaller works for now. Though you'd be a lot more portable if you were an animal. I guess lack of feeding is a tradeoff for legs in a situation like this."
He hopes that it can get itself to a manageable size and shape. Really, he thought when this happened it was supposed to be a stray dog, not a building with the brains of one.

[Slii Arhem]

Krayger's Shop of Horrors

It will stop grinding the road into cracks by the time it reaches the size of a single, small room, its proportions changing a bit to fit everything inside it that isn't store. And no matter where he goes, it'll follow along like a lovesick puppy. If he outpaces it by running or taking the train, it'll be along, eventually, at the fastest pace it can manage to grind along behind him.