The Wind in the Limbos

[Silcatra]

Closed, experimental thread. The rules for each post are as follows: Each post must be at least 200 words but may not exceed 250. OOC tags and the words within them don't count. Each post MUST advance the story, MUST make use of setting, and MUST have one solid bit of either dialogue, characterization, or action.

It was the end. It was the beginning. It was just like always, the flash of light and roiling heat that preceded the BOOM! she’d never hear. It was tea with Horatio, and finally, hopefully, it was the end. She closed her eyes, embracing it for real for the first time since she’d been dropped onto this gods-forsaken Island ten years ago.

There was the pain. There was always the pain; it was having her skin boiled off her muscles and bones, neck rent from body rent from limbs, oxygen ripped from her lungs and into airlessness, nothingness. But it only lasted a moment, and then faded, faded, into nothingness, into oblivion. Sweet oblivion.

Floating…

The first sensation to greet her consciousness was the feeling of weightlessness, and not like gravity had simply been nullified around her, more like it just didn’t apply, like up, down and sideways simply didn‘t exist anymore. It was a free and oppressive sensation, released from the shackles of reality with nowhere to go. The second was the silence, silence so profound her own heartbeat, the blood rushing in her veins pounded in her ears like firing cannons.

Dark eyes opened, only to be greeted by a blurring, fading swirl of greens and blues, houses and wars, landscapes and waterscapes, all mingling like some enormous chalk drawing in the rain. And it was empty, there was no one else, just her and the soundless procession of scenes.

Is this Purgatory?

[Mordelain]

Silcatra's thoughts were answered with more silence, a prehensile negative to the expectation she had of receiving illumination.

“I am the walker, this is my path,” said a voice, breaking the lack of sound in the strange limbo the other world woman found herself in.

The Tama Troubadour flickered into view, half folding into existence and half exploding with sudden enthusiasm. She had never seen someone else in the spaces between the worlds of the Kalithrism before, so her expression mimicked the sudden nausea that hit her in the gut and rose up into her head like a quick silver poison.

She blinked.

The worlds of Breen and Hudde swirled together around the two floating objects that called themselves strange names and followed stranger cultures. Mordelain examined the large Neolithic cathedral behind the girl, and felt a sudden reeling sensation knock her for six. Without warning, and without screaming, she fell away into nothingness and found herself calmly and resolutely in a vast desert of olive green sand; Hudde, her destination.

Mordelain let the shock settle down, before turning on a heel to walk towards the tall tree that wavered in the winds that rocked the surface of the inverted plane with strange tailwinds. She paused, nodded, and then pressed her hand against the bark.

She faded away once more, concentrating on the same point and thoughts that had brought her to cross paths with the woman.

She needed to know that she was not seeing things.

[Silcatra]

She hadn’t been here long, she thought. Maybe minutes…but how did time run here? Had she been in here centuries? Millennia? The other woman’s appearance and subsequent departure, the solid, real shape and the sheer reality of her voice was strange in this void, out of place, out of time. Was she a soul crossing to heaven, or a demon going for the damned? What was this place?

She left. A blink, a tilt and turn of the head. She left, and to leave, you must go somewhere.

This wasn’t the final step, it wasn’t the final stop. She’d always been moving, moving, full speed ahead, forward, no time to stop, no time to breathe, without the motion she lost meaning, she lost will.

To touch is to move. That’s how.

That meant that the objects she was watching in their wavering waltz were real, things that could be interacted with, touched. Without someone to have shown her that it was possible to exit, she’d have been content to observe into eternity, to accept that this was death.

Not anymore.

A giant locomotive whipped past her, almost too fast, like a bullet, but she ran for it, reached desperately for purchase. Come on! Hope slipped through her through her grasping fingers as though the image was only a mirage.

“No!” Was she stuck here, in this soundless void, for eternity? A hand pulled a die from an inner pocket, but spun without landing. No answers there.

[Mordelain]

Mordelain re-appeared, regaining an ounce of hope to measure against the infinite bleakness of limbo. She felt her heart beat loudly as she crossed between realities into the nothingness of the void. With luck, the squall of silence returned. With fear, she looked out through the swirling maelstrom for her shining light, and her gaze found it staring at the small of the strange girl's back.

The Troubadour drifted towards her, on the merit of her forward momentum as she had approached the tree. She still felt its touch linger on her fingertips, and shook them to cast the thought of going home from her mind. With great strength, she kept herself here, now, and in the presence of a miracle.

"Hello?" She said, breaking an oath to the tutors that had shown her the path, shattering the mountain of an age of learning for fear of losing this chance.

"What are you doing here, all alone?"

Fifty feet divided them, fifty lies kept them apart. Mordelain could not compute what she was seeing, as to top off their encounter, as lurid an event as it was, her experience of the many worlds of the Kalithrism failed her. The woman’s attire, the strange white cube she hurled into the nothingness, they were as alien to her as her presence was.

Why does your form make me whole again? She mused wistfully as she waited for an answer.

[Silcatra]

Again, sound to break the silence. A voice. The same voice. Had it been moments? Years? Did time matter any more than gravity here?

A hand swept up the die; if it wouldn’t stop spinning, it didn’t matter if the answer was two, peacocks, or butterflies. She turned, one solid object spinning amidst the chaotic swirl that seemed to be, for all purposes, the afterlife.

Fifty feet. Twenty-five paces. Fifty miles? Did space have meaning here, in this world where insects loomed large and buildings faded into miniscule within moments? Was any of it real?

The question seemed laughable, what was she doing here? But laughing would be rude, perhaps, so all she gave was a bewildered approximation of a smile.

“What do you mean? I’m dead, aren’t I? Isn’t that what it means to be here?”

She kicked off of nothing propelling herself forward while putting the die back in her pocket. Her feet slipped through frothing tides without getting wet, over cobblestone streets without picking up dirt. “And doesn’t everyone die alone? Why are you here, why are you back? Are you a being for which death has no meaning, or are you an hallucination?”

If there’s a heaven, it knows it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen things or people that aren’t really there.

[Mordelain]

Metaphorical questions befitting a metaphorical realm, but they still confused Mordelain’s racing mind. She thought forwards, and the direction of her mind brought her movement to a stark stop. She remained motionless and pensive as she considered her answer. A broken remnant of an old temple thundered into view behind her with a flurry of lightning, and passed into the aeons in the space of time it took her to reply. With pursed lips and a mellow expression, she threw words back at the stranger.

“Death is not this realm’s purpose, but those who linger here too long will only find its cold embrace.”

From the smell of burning paraffin and the odour of suspense in the air, Mordelain grew certain that the girl was not of the Kalithrism. Whilst she had always expected the existence of worlds beyond the worlds she knew, proof was another matter altogether.

She held out her hand with warmth and altruism to help the girl, lost in the river of convection between one place and another, between knowing, being and uncertainty.

“If you wish to live, then take my palm, I shall release you from the void, place you with conviction on a world where all is real, and certainty,” she tried to smile, to add to her offer, “is assured.”

Though I cannot promise the world we walk to will take kindly to your presence…

[Silcatra]

She stopped within arm’s reach of the other woman, standing straight and at eye-level with her. Booted heels clicked together sharply - but would clicking them three times take her home, she had to wonder - and hands smoothed the duster behind her.

Clicking your heels together only works if it’s ruby slippers, not combat-approved boots.

Around them, colors and scenes changed. A marble plaza spread beneath their feet, only to be subsumed and consumed by a blue and purple forest. Blue and purple trees? Weren’t trees green and brown, red and white?

Forcing her attention away from the blurring forms all around her, she gave the other woman a serious look, regarding her, evaluating her, trying to figure out if she was trustworthy or lying. In the long run, it probably didn’t matter; the worst she could do was take her to Hell, and hadn’t she earned that a hundred thousand times over? Was she not unrepentantly stained with blood, and had that not been part of what had made her mighty in the land she had called home this last, long decade?

“Perhaps this is ill manners, and to that effect I would beg your indulgence. But before I take your hand, I would like to know who you are, why you’re here, and why you’re willing to help me, who is strange to you.”

And after that was all answered, she had to answer this: did she, who had begged to die… actually want to live?

[Mordelain]

“There are many things strange to me in life, but it is a fair question,” the Troubadour smiled. “I am Mordelain, I am a world walker, and I travel twixt the worlds of what is known as the Kalithrism, spreading news and fable to the people of the nine realms.” The white ribbons in her hair started to float with sentient lives of their own.

She realised that if this woman was truly from beyond everything she knew, what she was saying would be lunacy and riddles in the eternally shifting patchwork of limbo. There was no other way to explain.

“I want to help you, because it is not your right to be here, not your right to walk where we walk.” She meant the Tama, but her head span at the thought of explaining what that meant. “I can help you, I want to help. Pray tell me that is enough?”

The silence of the between-realms came to an abrupt end with a sudden and low bass note. Something sounded like it had snapped, and far below, cobblestoned streets appeared. There was a house at the end of each like a capillary bulging with tension. They were at the heart of a magic far beyond reckoning, and they were blocking the natural flow of life from one realm to another.

“We must go, now,” she expressed flashing urgency matched only by the ever changing lights that swirled around them, a rainbow tapestry of conscious abstract.

[Silcatra]

Fortunately for Mordelain, the woman she was speaking to was from a reality where things had a habit of not making sense, and when pressured about it, the best explanation for it was that it didn’t have to make sense if it didn’t want to.

She looked down to process what she’d been told, eyes shaded beneath the brim of her hat. Not my right, so turn left. Or maybe not, with the winding, writhing world beneath and the swirling skies above.

She reached up reflexively to rub at her right eye; the blur of the thoughts in her head only meant madness was threatening to take her again. She needed to remain herself; the game had changed and she needed to be cogent to learn the rules.

And then came the break. She felt it before she heard it, a rumbling through the very fabric of the limbo, one that made even the air ripple. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end in response to the charges of forces beyond her ken. It thundered against her body, growled in the recesses of her mind, the very environment turning hostile.

She was a warrior of unlimited potential…but that was where she came from. Here and now, she was powerless to stop what was happening, she didn’t even have the time to process it. Instinct alone had her grabbing for the other woman’s hand, her own coming up as though to ward off an impending attack.

[Mordelain]

There were rules, laws and proverbs to her path. One did not simply go where one wished without consequence after all. To take another through the Kalithrism was a potent omen, and to do so in such circumstances only filled Mordelain’s heart with dread.

“Breathe…” she said softly, the sudden tingle of excitement running up her arm as their palms connected and a falling sensation hit them simultaneously.

Leaving the primal urgency of the void’s soul behind, and the crack of reality further still, the two wanderers, cast adrift in thought, time and spirit plummeted down into the swirling mists of what had, mere moments before, been a sprawling swamp.

“Remember…” she whispered, as they dissipated a hair’s breadth away from collision.

The next thing Mordelain remembered was the sudden loss of a spark of hope. The woman’s hand had been warm against her own cold body and the bridling emotions had heated her further still. Suddenly cold and bereft of that possibility Mordelain opened her eyes, and found herself standing in the central square of the People’s Republic of Breen.

“No stranger,” she said flatly.

“No fortune,” she said flatter still.

She turned on a heel and broke into a double spiral, frantically searching the market stalls and their wares. In the maze of red and white striped awnings she was once more without company, except the echo of the roaring winds in her mind that were silent, deafening, pensive.

[Silcatra]

Falling.

All of a sudden, the rippling, cracking, breaking of reality seemed yanked away. Her eyes tracked it until they couldn’t ,as the very void they were shifting through blurred and changed ever more.

Falling…down. Gravity.

It pulled her inexorably, faster and faster, toward a world of lush green and rich blues that were almost violets. It pulled her hand from Mordelain’s, ripping her apart from the traveler, the guide, and she was still falling, air being forced from her lungs as green and blue rushed toward her ever faster. The blue vanished, and the green became trees in her sight.

Too fast!

If there was a barrier forty feet off the ground that would keep her from plummeting to her death, she didn’t feel it.

Not the Island! She almost couldn’t hear her thoughts over the screaming of the wind in her ears. Instinctively, she turned in the air so that her feet were down and her duster was catching what it could of the air. Even a little slower was another second - although terminal velocity had a nasty habit of being terminal.

STOP! Her eyes glowed a fierce green as she willed, with whatever power she had left in her, to nullify her own gravity.

It worked and it didn’t. She still crashed rapidly through the trees, breaking branches and being beaten for it, but when she hit the ground, she was still alive.

Where…? was her last thought before blackness embraced her.

[Amen]

This judgment will use the full rubric with light commentary, and as requested I’ll briefly explain what I’m looking for in each category.

"The Wind in the Limbos"

by Silcatra and Mordelain

Plot Construction 16/30

Story 5/10 – Essentially what I’m looking for here are the elements of a good story (protagonist/antagonist, an introduction, rising action, climax, and a conclusion). “The Wind in the Limbos” is an odd piece in that it seems like an interlude in both characters’ lives (that one time I ran into a weird woman in the space between worlds), and as such it didn’t really feel self-contained. I know you guys limited your word count, but I think you also limited your ability to draw the reader in. If this story is impactful to the characters, I wasn’t drawn in enough to experience that.

Strategy 5/10 – The strategy category deals with the use of your character’s attributes (her skills, but also her personality and so on) to drive the thread. In this case, I docked you points because Silcatra wasn’t able to do much of anything and Mordelain couldn’t do too much more, so there just wasn't a whole lot room for strategy to come into play.

Setting 6/10 – Setting is pretty straightforward, this is where I judge how well you created your characters’ surroundings. Limbo is obviously a strange beast to try and describe, and I think you both did a good job of explaining the trippy, perhaps-indescribable nature of a place between places. On the other hand, I would have liked more description of Breen and Hudde, if only to have something to ground me against the ethereal acid-trip of Limbo.

Characterization 13/30

Continuity 5/10 – When discussing continuity, judges are primarily concerned with consistency both within the story’s framework, and against the wider backdrop of Althanas. For the most part everything is straightforward and consistent here, and there’s not a lot of room for things to be inconsistent. Still, the airy, metaphysical nature of the writing here might have been easier to follow if more were said about where Mordelain and Silcatra are coming from – where they were before limbo, and perhaps some small explanation as to why they’re there now.

Interaction 5/10 – Interaction is where we judge how the character relates to the world, not just socially but physically, and with attention to the extended ramifications of the character’s actions – the effects felt in response to what the character causes. Here the interaction between Mordelain and Silcatra is logical and believable, but limited, and the nature of the setting sort of precludes interaction with it.

Character 3/10 – This is where a judge decides if you gave the reader a strong, accurate representation of a believable character. The exercise limitations you placed on yourself made it difficult to satisfy this category – what do these two women look like? How do they appear to one another? How are they different? After reading this piece, I have only a very vague outline of Mordelain (I know she’s at least kind or dutiful enough to help someone in need), but my mental image of Silcatra is hazier.

Writing Style 24/30

Creativity 8/10 – This is where we try and evaluate a writer’s creativity, not just in terms of story, but one’s use of advanced literary techniques. I don’t think I need to tell you that you’re both strong writers; you’ve clearly got experience in the use of concise poetic language.

Mechanics 10/10 – The nuts and bolts are judged here, did you misspell anything, misuse punctuation, are there typos, are there formatting errors. In this case, I sure as hell couldn’t find any!

Clarity 6/10 – One’s clarity score is based on the writer’s ability to tell a comprehensible story in a way which is easily and accurately followed. In short, did I immediately understand everything the writer said, and does the larger picture make sense. In this case, I felt like Silcatra in some of the posts, certainly toward the beginning. The writing itself was clear, but it was difficult for me to grasp where these characters were and what was happening and why.

Wildcard 10/10 – Wildcard is where I get to put in or subtract as many points as I please, based on my thoughts or experience as a judge. In this case, I’m giving you a bunch because I feel like this thread deserves it. Your writing is beautiful, and while I didn’t always grasp what was happening, I never rolled my eyes or felt like I didn’t want to read anymore. I did not have to take a break, my mind didn’t wander, and I didn’t question your choices or mentally say “get on with it!” These things usually happen when I’m reading something dreamlike or metaphysical, but you both pulled it off and that impresses me.

Closing Notes: I approve of your experiment, and I think it served to make the thread more readable while contributing to that dreamlike, ethereal quality I mentioned. On the flipside, it limited your ability to paint a strong picture of your characters or explain the situation. Is there a way to fully and satisfactorily describe an interaction with and within limbo without shattering the mystique? I don’t know, but I have to calls ‘em like I sees ‘em.

I look forward to reading more of your work in the future!

Total: 63

Silcatra gains 400 EXP and 300 GP
Mordelain gains 350 EXP and 250 GP

[Yari Rafanas]

EXP and GP added!