Waking Up

[The Muri]

Closed to Ioder and Lucius. Recruitment thread HERE (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?27226-quot-Waking-Up-quot-Quest-Recruitment-and-OOC).

There was nothing… There was darkness. Black. Then I felt cold. Wet… I felt some form of liquid overflowing on me… However, this cold was fended off by beams of warmth on my face. I blinked my purple eyes open – only to be blinded by a giant, radiating light. I had to close my eyes again the light was so blinding! Then I heard… What was that? That… chirping sound? I heard some sort of birds in the distance, calling out to each other… I turned my head and opened my eyes again. I saw some fowls with white and grey feathers flapping their wings and flying on the ground. The ground was covered in some sort of grain… Irritating, yellow grain was absolutely everywhere! I felt it itching away at my head. I was sure it was inside my blond hair, scattered in my scalp. I blinked, just gazing out into a deep, blue body of water ahead of me.

Where am I?

I had to be somewhere! Everybody was here for a certain reason… A certain time. Everybody had purpose. However, no memories of mine entered my head.

What was I just doing just now?”

Really! What was I doing? I was bound to have been doing something before I woke up? But why was I asleep? Why was I here? The endless sounds of birds invaded my thoughts. I desperately searched my mind. What was I doing? How did I get knocked out before ending up here? Who even did that? What was this place? The hot star above me provided little relief from the feelings of my soaking wet clothes and the metal sword I felt clinging to my back. Where did that sword come from? How did I get my clothes? That backpack at the other side of me, what objects were inside? Why was it there? Did it belong to me? What was ‘me’ even? What was my name? Where did I come from? Did I know anybody?

Who am I?



I drearily looked ahead of me for hours. The sound of the waves coming up against the slopping ground as white foam was relaxing, they allowed me some peace in my wondering. But I was still wondering none the less! Who am I? What’s my name even? I don’t know my name…

“Kaida!”

My eyes darted wide when I heard a name being called out by some male. I suddenly turned myself over from my back to my side. I saw mostly nobody… There was only a man picking up a little girl as they left the grainy shore and journeyed into a forest behind us all. I blinked, not knowing who they were but still wondering: Is my name ‘Kaida’?

I had enough of lying around doing nothing. I decided to get up and explore. Some of my blond, punk designed hair fell into my face as I got up. I was soaking wet! Being inside a leather jumpsuit did not help that feeling one bit either… I sighed and picked up the backpack close to me. I walked awkwardly across the beach; I was covered in sand and water. I held my arms up and my legs were stretched out. It looked silly, but I was just trying to cope with the uncomfortableness of what I was feeling…

Thus, I had walked across the area. I saw a sign made of some sort of brown substance pounded into the ground. I didn't know how, but the marking on it were ones I could actually translate.



Welcome to Scara Brae!

I blinked, wondering about such a place, then walked down the path it pointed towards. I hoped that I could find civilization by then… And maybe- just maybe, I would find out who I was.

[Ioder]

"Days into nights and nights into days, this endless cycle maybe... just maybe bring the light on her little problem." Ioder said to himself as he watch this girl as she woke startled and confused. Being the curious creature himself he had instantly fixed himself on her, watching her for the hours that she sat looking in the roaring coast. He himself also being caught up in its endless beauty, each wave crashing along the coast in asymmetrical patterns.

It had been some time since he had last set foot on these lands but each and every time he had always found something to occupy himself, and this time it appears that this girl would be his entertainment. Pondering on how to appear before this woman his gave fixed on her apparel and noticed he stylish leather jump suit.

"I do believe that she may be a fighter, I guess ill just go as myself." Ioder though as he decided on what form to take. Standing just beyond the tree line Ioder's body had begun to morph and grow shorter. As a Seraphim he posses a trait that allows him to change his appearance at will to any other humanoid form. His once tall posture was replaced with a smaller one of a child. He now look like a normal fourteen year old boy with similar features as his true form, this was his go too for any quick morph as it was his appearance as a child.

Just as his change had finish the woman he had been watching stood and began to walk down the beach, and stopping near a sign and then continued on the path it directed her. "Hmm" Ioder voiced as he ran ahead to hopefully cross her farther down the path. With his childish figure he had definitely lost a bit of his running speed but did easily catch up to the wandering girl.

Planting himself about a hundred feet father up on the trail Ioder crouched down and began to fiddle in the dirt acting like he had just been there playing around. And as the woman approached him he stood and looked at her, with a childish grin he smiled at her and ran up close to her.

"Hiya," His childish voice broke her train of thought " Are you heading to town?" His question must have startled her as her face refocused on him.

[Lucius]

A Mile or So Down the Road

I’ve only been here since spring, and already I hate it. There is only so much mud, orc, and cheap beer a man can take on a mission. It’s not like I’ve even gotten anything out of it. I’m here for the Administrate. I’m here for Sei Orlouge and his militaristic career pipedream.

Okay, okay, maybe that’s not quite the truth.

I’m here to save the universe. Well, I’m here to save both universes (universae?) When the wormhole appeared in my own time, galaxy, and space, I was sceptical. It had happened before countless times and nobody flinched. It wasn’t until we looked into the anomalies that shit hit the fan. We were shrinking. Well, you were shrinking I guess. Your universe was getting further and further away and that meant time was going wrong.

If one shrinks whilst connected, the other will eventually go the way of the Prima Vista’s star drive and tear a hole in whatever run down clapped out space port it happens to be docked in at the time. Of course, the Administrate, the police of thought and decency had bigger concerns. They quite liked the solar systems arranged as they are. Furthermore, they quite like being in control of them as well.

This brings me back to why I’m sat here in this shithole. I think they call it Scara Brae's ‘finest’, but I’m not convinced. There’s not enough fun here for it to be worth the trouble. Still, it’s the only place that let me in after dark so I guess I have to take my lot. I came looking for the cause. I came looking for the reason. I came looking and expecting something different to what I found.

“Absolutely fucking nothing,” was what I said to myself over and over. It made me feel good about failure, if such a thing were possible.

“What was that?” I heard the barkeep ask for the hundredth time. Didn’t he get it? I’m talking to myself. I’m wallowing in my own misery. “You ‘ad enough guv!”

This was how dwarves talked on the open road apparently. In my universe they had style. In my universe they were the progenitors of space empires and the charlatans of oligarch’s freighters. They were absolutely not inn keepers.

“No, I’m good. You’ll allow me another for the road?” slipped out my old adage. If anything was going to help me think up a plan to get home, sharpish, it was beer. It was pure unaltered piss in a battered tankard.

“Aye, agreed. One more,” the dwarf kindly ‘offered’. I don’t know why he bothered. If he wouldn’t serve me, I’d find a bar that would.

Unless of course, by some divine miracle, the answer to all my problems happened to just walk through the saloon doors and bump me off my seat into frivolous adventure. After getting shot, chased, and hounded through Salvar after starting a rebellion, I wasn’t counting my galactic mutant chickens.

[The Muri]

I turned around, my messy blond hair flying, when I heard a voice behind me- Wait... So okay, I actually jumped. But my hair still flew around.

I looked behind me after that little startled to see a young boy, who seemed slightly younger than me, racing up to me. He had long, blond hair, a dirty outfit from playing in the dirt, and a sweet smile. I stammered, suddenly realizing that I could even speak. I knew communication, I recognized the language right off the bat. But from where?

"Town?" I asked. The sound of birds chirping and flying above us left me to look up at them, then down to the shadows which those birds cast. The dirt trial, the trees around it, the smell of fresh water. It was beautiful... and yet I felt disturbed. Why? However, I tried to push that behind me as I looked at the boy in front of me, "Y-Yes... If I'm even heading towards one." I took an opportunity to ask, "Where- Where am I-I?" I was shivering because of how cold that water had been. Why in the world had I stayed there for so long? It was wet and freezing! Was it just the water alone? Or was something else causing me to shake?

[Ioder]

Unbelievable he thought as this girl really didn't seem to know anything about who she was or where she is, like she had completely lost everything. "She must have no idea about anything, maybe I could have even more fun." Ioder thought as he pondered possible ways to completely screw with this girl, tell her lies or completely manipulate here the possibilities were really endless. His train of thought had been broken by her wide eyes staring at him waiting a response.

"Are you not from here?" Ioder said as he felt slightly rushed. He noticed that his playing in the dirt really did make his cloths filthy and immediately brushed off the dirt as well as possible. "Your in Scara Brae, just outside of my small town up the hill." Ioder was not really from this town but he had remembered it from his previous travels to these parts.

"Lets see if she is going to play along." Ioder thinks even though he isn't entirely sure how he would like to torment this young girl or even if was going to at all. On rare occasions he has been know to be helpful even though his nature was more of a prankster of sorts.

"C'mon and ill take you there if you want." he says in his childish voice as he turns and begins to walk to town assuming that this girl would simply fallow as his act was very convincing. "So what brings you to these part?" he asks trying to pass the time.

[The Muri]

Lucius is staying out of this round.

I looked at the boy, he seemed okay to trust. Besides, I had to start out somewhere on this life. I sighed, crossing my arms across my chest, "Alright." And I began to follow him down the messy dirt road. He asked what I was doing here... I must have blanked out.

I stopped, not knowing at all. Everything was... empty... void... I had no memory of this place or anywhere else for that matter! I just stood there, thinking... of nothing. Then I noticed that he was still moving and I came back to life. I raced up to her then skidded in the dirt to slow down, creating a small cloud and getting the brown dust all over my boots and pants. I looked to him and simply replied, "... I just woke up here. I don't know why."

If there was any information I could give at all, I was half willing to share it and half willing to keep it to myself. I didn't know myself, how could I know others? How could I trust them? All I knew though had been placed in that sentence... I just woke up, blank as a new sheet of paper, with no purpose or mission at all. It was so confused... I could think of nothing. I had decided to trust this blond-haired boy with what I had... For I had nothing.

I felt the sun beating down on my from above, the bright blob of heat was causing me to sweat in such a heavy outfit. I hated it, wanting to get into any shade available. I blinked under this heat, I felt as if my energy was being sucked from me. I felt sweaty and wet. I felt so lacking that I was dragging my steps, making my boots even more dirty than before. I didn't care though, I wanted shelter! I needed shelter... in whatever form there was. And I wanted it now.

[Kor Teithanti]

Frustrated and weary, Sefosifer stalked the sandy fringe of Scara Brae’s coast. He had no destination in mind. How could he, as a stranger in a strand land? With everything so new and at times frightening, every turn and change of scenery, no matter how slight, crushed him in under a mountain of indecision and doubt. The nigh-ethereal thinness of the dry air made him feel parched. The odd way the world brightened as its star climbed ever higher made him feel exposed. The queer way every grain of sand on the beach inexplicably clung to his footpads and tail as he miserably plodded forward made him feel filthy, grimy, and contemptible.

Worse, more than by the air, the light, and the sky, he was afflicted by his earlier lapse into animalistic savagery.

He scowled at the memory. To think, that plant-wrapped bundle was, in fact, a baby animal and not a novel form of plant. No, that was just an excuse. He knew what it was from the moment he saw it, but let his hunger overwhelm his sensibilities. Even if only for a short while, he relished the madness—the taste of its hot blood as it trickled down his tongue and the mother’s pitched screams of loss as they echoed through the forest in the predawn hours.

Deep down, a primal part of him wanted to be a predator. That is what Sefosifer refused to think about, and, for the hundredth time, guilt formed an uncomfortable knot in his bowels. He paused and shook his head, as though that act would shake the matter from his mind. It didn’t work. Punishment was what he felt he needed, he concluded. Pain, a relief so easy to come by. He need only open his eyes just a little wider. Instantly, harsh, unfiltered light poured painfully into his pupils and overloaded his nerves. He flinched, shook his head, and did it again, and again, and again.

Eventually, the pain subsided. Although his vision was still somewhat indistinct, he was able to make out shapes now just as well as when the world was dark. To his left, the ocean; to his right, the forest, before him, the beach, although there was something strange just ahead. A flat piece of wood nailed to a post, much like the masts he saw in shipwrecks on the sea floor. It was marked with symbols that called to mind those etched on the monument of Mentes, although these were different. They seemed far less ancient.

Knowledge, Sefosifer decided, was a good place to start. He moved slightly inland, into a declavity of bushes and tall grass, and there, concealed, tried to make sense of the inscriptions. For what felt like ages he sat and turned the symbols over in his mind. There was obviously a context to them, perhaps tied to the shape of the slab of wood, or its prominent and orderly display, or the change in color and uniformity of the line of ground beneath it that ran from the sandy coast and into the forest.

More time passed, with no luck. The star was now high in the sky, yet all he could conclude was that it was the name of something. It said “Scara Brae,” but what that meant was beyond his ken. Then he saw people approach the sign, make strange noises and gestures, and then proceed onward into the forest.

With a flick of his tongue, he decided to follow them.

The path was decidedly easier to walk along and the shade the trees provided made it easier to see.

As he continued his leisurely chase, Sefosifer became bolder, drew nearer, and when they stopped in a patch of sunlight to talk he nearly bumped into them.