Random Plots and Places 12: More pseudorandom than we care to admit

[Deathkeeper]

Treehouse

Sarina frowns.
Groans.
Frowns some more.

With a sigh, Sarina flips open the case. "I can't use this if I don't know what it is!"

[Recaiden]

Opening the case may not be as enlightening as Sarina hoped.
It's empty.
At least, empty of things that can be seen, known, and contained within a briefcase. It's full. You can feel it. Full of old magic glowing sweetly. The thing within, it is complete. It is perfect. It is all the is required. It is, if everything that was or is or will ever be passes on, continuing, immutable and perfect. It is a bulwark against dark times when He holds thought in his hand. Like many cures, it is deadly poison if you do not have the disease.
It trembles at the sound. '-what it is?', was it? The magic surges and spills.
The landscape of the treehouse fades away, clean airy windows replaced with dark glass; one finds themselves pressed against a window overlooking a precipice, and the very air writhes and squirms. You cannot go back into the skyscraper, can you? Can you even bear to turn your head? Doubtful. Better to jump. Break the glass and jump
Transportation to this Holding Cell is nothing. A trifling distraction for the body. The tainted cure is for one's mind. Love? Unnecessary. Friendship? An outdated lie. Empathy? What is there to empathize with when there is only You and Him? Anything that ties, it tugs at like a rising wind, tending to a hurricane. It will tear them away; don't cling on too tightly. You simply don't need those any more, Sarina. There's so much more to feel within, between the edges of the broken glass.
Someone looking in might not understand. They would certainly be jealous. They might have to hate you. But they don't matter anymore.

[Deathkeeper]

Skyscraper?

Sarina does not scream, because while she is clearly overly curious, she is not quite that stupid to blatantly ignore warnings. She simply does her best to meditate as she was taught in class, protecting her mind while she tries desperately to bring up a ward to protect her mind from foreign intrusion. It might not work when she can't speak and something is already attacking it.

[Recaiden]

The ward goes up fine.
It is unlikely to help. It is a small wall around a sandcastle in the face of a tsunami. It's a nice wall, surely. Built of solid sand, and it even has little shovelwork crenelations. But it's only sand. When the waves sweep it, it will disintegrate along with its castle. Especially when the water had already reached the castle's towers before the wall went up.
The air is swarming, stifling, pressing on nose and mouth and ears, looking for entry. The pressure is likely painful. But it could be resisted.

[Deathkeeper]

Treescraper

Something told her to break the glass and jump. But she can't do that, because that would make noise, and she cannot make noise. So instead she simply tries to move, turn, anything. Anything besides simply staring into the abyss while this thing destroys her mind.

[Recaiden]

It's heavy, but Sarina can surely turn around and push through the room. The place is filled, wall-to-wall, every crevice packed with-
air? I guess it's just air. Not anything alive.
But so heavy, so many.
The carpet is dingy and crushed; it was once a nice red color. Hoof-steps on it are likely too quiet to discern. The cold crisp office furniture is strewn here and there.
There's a pulse of pressure; the windows flex outward ever so slightly.
In the hall outside it's dark; emergency lighting strips lead one way to an askew door - the stairwell. One doesn't have to follow them. The other way down the hall, into the darkness, you might run into the webs. That wouldn't be ideal.

It's brave of Sarina to try to do something to stave off whatever's happening, though probably futile. No mortal has ever managed more than delaying this power. One could try praying, but Message also lacks the power to put your mind back together - directly, anyway. That isn't to say that no one out there could help, but...they're far away, and the air is made of bugs, it isn't so bad being a psychopath, is it? If that's what this is. Maybe nothing was wrong, you just meditated too hard and now you're enlightened and understanding the world is scary. Who can really say what makes a sentient being tick?

[Deathkeeper]

Treescraper

Sarina can light her way. She is afraid not of darkness, and not of webs. She is a spider princess.
She begins to pray as she enters the dark hall. Begging to be saved, for help, for anything. But then she stops.
She is a spider princess.

Sarina takes hold of her thread of time, and rips it back as forcefully as she can muster. She doesn't need to go back very far. Five minutes is sufficient. But she has to go. Now.

[Recaiden]

It never was going to be, was it?

Such a hasty manipulation of time is noticed, and a certain spider inserts a little marker thread, but lets it the timeline spool away to when it's heading for. It bounces a bit and...

It's quite a while ago, Isaac.
[Skullfort Town]
But the future should be familiar to you, until you start making changes.

[Deathkeeper]

Lost in Time

Isaac looks about, and noting the red tip of his own nose, gasps and tries desperately to grasp his thread of time, but he hasn't gained that ability yet.
He struggles to decide what to do, but in the end he decides that the best thing he can do is go to the Queen and ask to have his timeline restored. If he's refused he can just go back to the temple be the time dusk comes and do his best to relive the events properly. Heck, he might even do better since he knows things like Alexis's taste in ladies. Isaac heads to the forest, though he falls flat on his snout a few times as he struggles to remember how to walk as a serpent.

[Recaiden]

Poor clumsy knucker.

A messenger-orb bobs over to get in Isaac's way.
-it is dangerous to enter the forest-
-especially alone-
-can we help you with something here-
It pleads with him.

[Deathkeeper]

Lost in Time

"I have grave need to speak to someone in the Forest. If you wish to help me, keep watch for me while I go. I don't have a choice." he tells the orb, continuing on his way. Gosh, his deep giant-lizard voice is gross. It's even deeper than she remembers, though that's probably because at this point he's much bigger than Isaac generally was.

[Recaiden]

-take care-
-and do not capitalize 'forest' in the future-
The orb lets him go. It's definitely not going with him.

The Wode is as it usually is, and the trees and undergrowth part to let Isaac through. He can feel himself being watched as he arrives at Spider HQ.

[Deathkeeper]

Lost in Time

Isaac chuckles. The orbs are better at sensing tone than he gave them credit for. But that's fine. Any day now the forest will be capitalizing itself.
"Greetings, Your Highness. I seem to have gotten myself a bit lost in the time stream. I must beg for your help." he declares to the darkness, sincerely hoping that the Queen is powerful enough to recognize him through time. Sarina will assume she's a bit outside of time at her mighty level of time magic.

[Recaiden]

"Sarina, yes. Is this what you're going to end up as? You only, oh, no, that's the other one. When would you like to be?"
Sarina assumes more or less correctly.

[Deathkeeper]

Lost in Time

"No, this is what I was for a few days, before I met the High Priest of the town and then you for the first time. Can you put me back when we last talked- wait no, that's subjective. Can you put me forward to the morning after I try to understand the nymphs and the spiders so I talk to Roth and the Hemlock and then say stupid things to you? Uh, as myself, please." asks Isaac, figuring that the best thing to do is just to be honest about that one. At "myself" he curls up a bit, foreclaws cupped at his body, as if miming breasts.

[Recaiden]

"Hmmm."
The whole floor shakes, briefly.
"Yes, I can do this for you. Try to be more precise in the...future."

Everything blinks out, and the next thing (subjectively) should be Sarina waking up at the named time. Everything seems to be in order. Human face, appropriate curves, everything clearly visible, stars, eight legs...oh. Maybe this isn't the right time after all.

[Deathkeeper]

Treehouse

Technically, this is not the day Winds arrived, but the previous morning. Sarina hadn't done anything very exciting except spend the day with Alexis, which she'd love to repeat.

Only she seems to have come down with a bad case of spider-butt. Sarina looks down and squeaks before clapping a hand over her mouth. She's also sitting in a beautiful silk hammock beside Alexis, who stayed the night after their "distracting." She could swear there was a bed here, but clearly there's a silk hammock here instead. One that vibrates a bit like most webs do as she thinks about moving over to the dresser and her legs simply scuttle her there, without even thinking. How odd. On her dresser is a bunch of pictures of her with people in Town, and especially Alexis once she was able to be photographed. And there's also a mirror beside it, to look at herself.

[Recaiden]

If she wanted a bed, she should have stayed over in the hideout under the temple, not this reversed setup.

As the web shakes, Alexis wakes up, all eyes opening at once, and her aura flashing briefly brighter than normal.
"Good morning there, Princess."
She sits up and stares into the mirror, rapt.

[Deathkeeper]

Treehouse

Sarina turns around to Alexis, her legs moving as naturally as she can ever remember her legs moving. She turns back to look in the mirror. Is she chubbier than she was before? She definitely seems to be a bit on the shorter and stouter side than she remembers. She's still curvy at least. And with this body, she's a solid foot taller than Alexis.
"Good morning, Your Holiness. Do I uh, look good this morning?" she asks nervously.

[Recaiden]

Alexis blinks (all-together again) and gets out of bed hammock. It hasn't been very long that she's been able to see her own reflection, you know. It's still very strange. As usual, she's a bit unsteady until she slips her sandals on.
"You're beautiful." It's not the whole truth, but it's still the right thing to say. Everyone looks better after cleaning up and spending a few minutes awake, but that's just a pedantic detail.
Then she takes a prayer posture, hands half-overlapped, head slightly up, snakes stretching out in every direction. About half a minute later, if Sarina's still around, she swings up on her back. You know, like always.
"And me?"

[Deathkeeper]

Treehouse

Sarina pulls on some clothes while Alexis says her daily prayer. There's something odd about her clothes. She feels like the size was different last time she checked, but it also seems right. What was she doing again? She was looking at the photos for something, but the reason is getting fuzzier by the minute. She gets on a bra and a nice blouse. Cotton, not silk.
Sarina smiles as Alexis as she's sat on. It's a familiar, wonderful feeling. She's pretty sure, at least.
"As amazing as ever. Want to go wash up? Don't want to go back to down with bedheads." she says with a smile, though with snakes for hair Alexis has much less to worry about.

[Recaiden]

One of the snakes hisses, reflecting annoyance at the implication that they don't look good.
"That would be best."
Alexis hops off on the other side and goes to get ready. There's a lot of day ahead of them, and at least as much to do.

But the next morning someone arrives with a mysterious case in hand, just like before. Perhaps Sarina has a chance to save a wild predatory spider. Or perhaps she's just asleep until the fight.

[Deathkeeper]

Treehouse

Sarina scuttles down the tree. She packed away the ladder she keeps around for Alexis after she left. She was supposed to wake up in time to save the spider but she forgot that her alarm clock is at her house in the Town, not the Forest. Oops.
"Hello, you. Who sent you, anyway?" she asks.

[Recaiden]

"Hello, Princess Sarina."
Winds stops a little way away and bows.
"You could say Malukhar sent me, but I am truly doing this because it needs to be done."
"Are you going to be more careful with the case this time?"

[Deathkeeper]

Treehouse

Sarina stops and gapes at Winds before re-orienting herself and folding her arms angrily over her chest.
"I'm not doing anything with it until I get a bigger piece of the picture. That thing is horrendously dangerous. I still don't know what it is, least of all what it's for and what you expect me to need it for." she insists.

[Recaiden]

"I have warned you that you don't want to know."
"Let me try again"
"You do not want to know."
With his free hand, Winds taps the corner of his eye.
"I can tell you this much safely: it is a countermeasure to my brother. It will be needed at a time when there are few other options to avoid the trap."
"Your new body suits you, by the way."

[Deathkeeper]

Treehouse

Sarina's head buzzes, and she's a bit more aware of her legs and abdomen. Right, she was definitely bigger after the travel.
"I can't tell if you're being sincere or sarcastic, but either way, I'm just going to bury it, then. I hope that's okay with you." she huffs.

[Recaiden]

Winds shakes his head with a small smile.
"I'm not sarcastic."
Ever.

"Very well. I hope you don't forget where you bury it."

[Deathkeeper]

Treehouse

"Well, thanks for the compliment. At least I think it's a compliment, whatever it is about me you think suits me. And I won't forget, so just hand it over so I can fetch a shovel." she says, opening up a little bit.

[Recaiden]

"It is simply an observation."
Winds strolls up the rest of the way and hands Sarina the briefcase.
"Good day to you."