News
about
Administrators and moderators will post important news here. Please be sure to check back regularly. :)

freebies
Freebies are sometimes posted on this board. Please be aware that a freebie can only be claimed up to one week after it was posted.

Freebies are often granted to "all active characters". A character is considered active if it has made an IC post within the last 2 weeks. Posts made after the freebie was posted do not count.

version five plot prelude; part one.
IP: 95.149.90.131
Posted on April 5, 2010 at 04:56:00 PM by georgia

“I don’t like this,” the dog moans in his low, gravelly tones; “I really don’t like this.” Poppy ignores him. Penguin, her harlequin Great Dane familiar, has had a bad case of the grumbles ever since she reached level 5 and he inherited her unpredictable magic. The ensuing bangs (often with catastrophic consequences) did not suit the dog, who had previously found his mistress’s uncontrollable divinity a source of amusement but was now beginning to appreciate it for the annoyance it truly was. It was alright for Poppy – she’d lived with it for over a thousand years and had gotten so used to it that she couldn’t imagine life without it – but Penguin had never had a drop of magic in his blood before, and now he’s being confronted with omnipotent power. It’s no wonder his health has taken a dive, although Poppy would prefer if he could choose somewhere other than her bed sheets to be sick. The dog sniffs, vying for pity. Still sore over having to clean up his earlier vomit, the Eurasian girl pays no attention to him and continues with the extremely boring task of washing up last night’s crockery. Previously, she would have attempted to do this with magic – with Penguin’s objections – and then would have run around hysterically for half an hour when the plates turned into bats, perhaps even tripping over the Dane who would have fallen to the ground in mirth. Now, however, she doesn’t think it a particularly good idea to be flaunting her powers under the circumstances – somewhere, deep down, she has a considerate side. “I’ve got a really bad feeling,” Pingu whines, “like... ominous. Can’t you feel it?” She can. As a matter of fact, she’d been feeling it for several months – since before she’d gotten married. She’d grown as much used to the lingering and inexplicable uneasiness as her uncontrollable magic and hadn’t spared it much thought recently, but now that Pingu mentioned it, it enveloped her once again. Discomfited, Poppy pushes away the remaining dirty plates and turns back towards her dog. That’s when it happens. The world falls into blackness and the ground beneath her starts to shake. Seven times the earth tremors beneath her feet, each quake accompanied by knocking (like knuckles on wood) and high-pitched scrabbling (like fingernails on a chalkboard) sounds. After the seventh shudder the world slides back into focus, unchanged. Seven earthquakes should shake the room to pieces, and yet it looks exactly as it did a few moments before; clearly, what Poppy felt and heard did not affect reality, only her. Penguin looks how she feels. His legs are shaking and his brown eyes wide – he must have felt it too. Almost the exact same experience has happened to Poppy before, on the beach with Draco when he’d proposed, but Penguin hadn’t felt it then. Also, the first time it had happened, she’d only felt the earthquakes and the knocking – that horrible scrabbling noise was something new, and it drives her anxiety up a few notches from ‘uneasy’ to ‘scared shitless’. “Something’s coming,” she says slowly, trying not to let her voice shake; “something bad.” ---- There are strange pictures in the water today. Osiris is used to seeing moving images in the water. Glimpses of far-off realities are best observed through reflective surfaces, like mirrors and puddles, and his clairvoyance often creeps up on him without him realising. Today, however, the picture is exceptionally unusual, and not altogether pleasing; it shows a beautiful, beautiful field of precious flowers being ripped up and shredded by some unseen force. The self-proclaimed deity’s earthen limbs begin to quiver. He rocks gently for a few moments, before rolling sideways and throwing up into the long grass. ---- Far away on the other side of Shaman, Evan is having a similar experience. He doesn’t use his powers over the visual very often, and has decided today that he wants to try a dab hand at scrying – the ability to look into water and see places where he has already been. Hunched over a little puddle courtesy of last night’s rainfall, Evan closes his eyes and focuses, trying to concentrate on visualising the Silver Cove. As he’s young and inexperienced it usually takes a few minutes for him to see anything, so imagine his surprise when he opens his eyes and sees an image there. At first he thinks it’s his own reflection staring back at him, but as he looks closer he can see the lines in the face which indicate a man much older than him. The first prickling of fear begins to shiver through the young boy; who was this man, and how is he able to see him through scrying? Surely when he scrys, he can only see people or places he has already seen with his own two eyes? Looking straight at Evan, the man raises a finger to his lips in the internationally famous ‘shh’ gesture. His lips twist into a horrible smile and he vanishes, leaving Evan staring into a blank, muddy puddle. ---- Lilith wakes with a start. She’s sitting bolt upright in bed, breathing heavily, drenched in sweat and shaking. Something is stirring at the edge of her mind but she automatically blocks it, lowering her defences only when it persists and she realises that it’s her own familiar, Seth. As an Egyptian Sefert, Seth is too large to share her room with her (or even to get through the door) so he sleeps outside the window. He’s awake too, now – his great, dragonish head is perched on the open windowsill and he’s watching her carefully with his calm, caring eyes. Still shaking, Lilith slips out of bed towards the window and wraps her arms around him, breathing in his familiar scent and rubbing her face against his neck in a catlike manner. “Was it that dream again?” He asks gently. “Always the same one.” Her breathing is beginning to slow now; her heart is returning to its regular rate. “Darkness all around, but when I reach out with my hands there’s a barrier there. It’s like I’m stuck in a tube, but I’m blind and deaf and I can’t break out. I keep running my hands over it, searching for a way out, but...” she gives a little sob. “And I think... I think such terrible things, Seth. I think horrible things about people – about my mum, and Arthur, and Adonis, and Aura, and Twinge... I think about how I’m going to hurt them.” Seth licks her hand. “It’s only a dream, Lil. It isn’t real.” “It feels real. I feel like I’m a different person in my dream, Seth, like I’m not Lil anymore... and when I am, I only have one thing on my mind: revenge.” ---- “Kraar,” Morgana closes her eyes and rests her head against the tree. “They’re speaking to me again.” The raven lands heavily on his mistress’s shoulder, flapping his wings and cocking his head with interest. Mediumship is one of the newer of Morgana’s powers, and one of the hardest to control – the voices seem to pay no heed to when she wants to listen to them but rather approach her at their own will. She doesn’t usually mind, since the spells are brief and normally very interesting, but recently it’s been happening more often. The deceased are restless; they can sense the connection between this world and the realm of the dead is strengthening, and they want answers. Morgana doesn’t blame them – she wants answers too. She feels a strange, sudden warmth in her bones, washing away the majority of the voices. It’s almost as if someone has lit a fire inside her. One voice remains – a voice which Morgana doesn’t recognise but is somehow familiar to her, like an old grandparent who died before she was born; the voice is full of fire and passion, but it’s sharp and it scares her slightly. “Follow the light,” it says; “beware the darkness. Beware the elements. Beware, above all, the blood coursing through your veins.” The light, the fire and the voice all fade away, leaving Morgana alone with Kraar once more. ---- The rabbit splutters once and dies. Nine stares down at the little creature in her arms, mortified. Not having any healing powers of her own, she had been unable to save the animal, but she had hoped that she would be able to ease its suffering a little and relax it. This is the first time her serenity vibes have failed on her; the first time she has not been able to make someone feel peaceful and positive. Trying to hold back her emotions, Nine places the rabbit on the ground and focuses on her illusionism. A giant moose appears from nowhere in front of her, grinning insanely, and then vanishes again as she waves her hand. A second test. Nine closes her eyes and concentrated on her third and final power, shapeshifting; when she reopens them the ground is much closer to her and she has white, feathery wings were her arms were only a moment before. Shifting back from a dove into a person, Nine frowns wonderingly down at the carcass of the rabbit. Something must be interfering with her serenity vibes, since the rest of her magic worked fine. What though? What could be so terrible that it would affect her power like that? ---- Loki taps his mistress’s foot, smiling eagerly up at her. “Come on, Phoenix!” He whines, “I want to go home!” Phoenix doesn’t even look down. The small, round tennis ball drops from her hand and rolls away down the beach, forgotten. Slowly Phoenix starts to shake. “Loki,” she gasps; “the cliff, look at the cliff!” Her arctic fox familiar turns to look at the cliff, but sees nothing out of the ordinary; still the same, imposing red rock standing impressively over them. He can’t see what Phoenix sees, with her left eye – that the cliff face has gone from its dusty red-orange colour to a gleaming black, and that all the plants and weeds growing out of the rock have shrivelled and died. A blinding pain racks through the young girl, who can’t take it any longer and turns and runs. Confused, Loki sprints after her, trying to make sense of the thoughts tumbling around in her head. ‘There’s something in the cliff,’ is all that comes through the telepathic link, again and again, like a stuck record; ‘there’s something in the cliff. There’s something in the cliff.’ ----

Replies:

• version five plot prelude; part two. - By georgia April 5, 2010 at 04:56:55 PM

You must register before you can post on this board. You can register here.

Post a reply:

Username:
Password:
Email:
Subject:
Message:
Link Name:
Link URL:
Image URL: