caveofsapphires | smaller patch of fading sky [ open ]

smaller patch of fading sky [ open ]

WHO: EVERYONE. All PCs thus far will be in this log, through active tagging or implication.
WHAT: THRILLS. SPILLS. Hiking trip toward the Diamond City.
WHERE: The Overworld.
WHEN: Forward-dated to May 1st (Tuesday) through May 7th (Monday).
WARNINGS: May contain violence or other mentions of physical harm. This is not summer camp.
NOTES: More information can be found on the OOC post here. Please read it!

Gathered in the morning haze, Sleepers were brought to the mouth of the Cave with plenty of supplies and equipment. Compasses that would point them toward the City. Backpacks full of clothes and food, medical kits, tents and even weapons. Stun rifles and knives — to fight off any unwanted company, they said. ("Watch out for their bite," Ryan had commented. "Those fuckers are downright feral.") The straight and narrow path would get them there in six days if they kept a good clip. They were sent off just like that. Refusals to leave were met with a wall of guard force officers blocking the entrance back into the cave city. No way to go but forward, unless someone was particularly stalwart about remaining.

From the exterminator's station near the mouth, leaving the Cave was as simple as a short hike upward into the fresh air of the Overworld. Dust and an uncomfortable sort of heat pervaded the atmosphere, light winds stirring up the sand and teasing the meager bits of vegetation that had grown. No matter what direction you looked... it was all wasteland, cracked ground and desolate emptiness. Jutting up from scarred ground were boulders and small spires made entirely of glass and patches of stone; instead of reflecting the harsh sunlight, they seemed to absorb it and only add to the muted loneliness of the atmosphere. As far as the eye could see, there was no life to be found.

With no other option, the Sleepers eventually made their way onward.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

That was that. They were kicked out of the Cave with nothing but a compass to follow and no choice to turn around. They could go anywhere they wanted... but where else was there to go? Wind howled quietly in the distance and the sun beat down mercilessly on anything unlucky enough to be above ground. Standing still would be a bad idea unless relative shelter could be found. Outcroppings of glassy rock or large enough scars in the land would suffice. Just don't let yourself get burned.

The day progressed as relatively normal as could be. Walking, talking, breaking for food and a moment's rest, everyone continued onward. At first everything seemed fine. Murmuring of the wind across the ground steadily grew louder, louder and louder until it was soon apparent that it wasn't the wind at all.

It was the ferocious yowl of something gigantic and feline. It was coming for the Sleepers. It was ready to hunt.

What was that? Not the cry of a wild cat, but a gust tugging at your legs and ready to knock you over. It roared from the west, building up speed and ferocity, until all that could be seen was a wall of sand racing toward the group from the far distance.

Run, Sleepers. Run faster than the storm about to engulf you or search for shelter. Make it to the crevasse, or buffer yourself with the scenery, or look for some sort of third option. Do not get caught out alone.

Finding broken down or unidentifiable structures along the way toward the City was not uncommon. More often than not, they were nothing but crumbled concrete or rotted out piles of lumber. This one was different. This structure still stood.

By the end of the day, as day gave way into chilly dusk, the structure stood tall at the edge of vision. It had obviously seen better days, half of the third floor caved in and noticeable even from such a distance: a mansion, standing lone and tall as a testament to time gone by. Maybe an hour out of the way to get to it. That it had not yet fallen into complete ruin indicated that it might make good shelter for the night, should anyone wish to make the trip.

After the excitement of the rest of the week, another day of rest under cloudy skies was well-earned. Too bad no one in the Overworld was willing to take good karma as payment.

Thomp. Thomp. Thomp.

The noise came around midday, when the sun shone its hardest through gaps in the cloud cover, loud and metallic and getting closer with every step. Something was coming, something nearly unidentifiable, something nearly on top of the Sleepers before they even knew it was there.

They came to an impassable canyon. No matter which direction they looked, it only got wider from end to end. Just beyond it, the spires of still-standing buildings in the City were visible in the far reaches of the plain beyond. Their only option would be to walk around and waste precious days to try and find an alternate solution... or go straight through. Those with good hearing might be able to pick out the faint sound of rushing. Water running through the shadowy depths of the wide ravine.

Whatever option the Sleepers would choose, one thing was obvious: it was a setback. They would have to spend more time to get past this obstacle than the Workers could have predicted.

No matter what the Workers had said, there was something breathtaking about seeing the world with his own eyes. It sent a powerful shiver down his spine. Everything... there was no "everything". While the Cave had been strange, foreign and intimidating, this Overworld was vast and something else entirely. It was not home, it was not safe and here they were, expected to make the trek all the way to a City none of them recalled. Anselmo had made one thing abundantly clear: moving backward was not an option.

Abruptly taking in a deep breath, Liam began to cough on the accumulated dust. "Oh, fucking hell," he muttered, patting on his own chest to try and clear the passage. If this was an indication of how the rest of their journey was to go, then they were screwed.

He was worried. The abilities that he had had in his dream had been just that-- a dream. He didn't have foresight to know things that might help him. It would never be much, but he would have hoped that he would have been able to find shelter at the very least. But he couldn't leave people behind. He was no leader, but he needed to help however he could.

"Can... can anyone defend themselves?" he asked in his quiet voice, uncertain. Twitch certainly couldn't. He still trembled constantly, and his head ached from the stress. But he needed to do something, somehow. His hands trembled too bad for the rifle to be any use at all to him, and he was having trouble figuring out if he could even use the knife. But he was going to try. "I should be able to help with cooking."

Liam turned to give a Look to the one who had spoken up. What he really wanted to do was stop and catalogue what resources the Workers had truly left them with, yet he knew staying still in the heat was no way to be — if not for himself, then for Ken and the rest of the lot. He pulled the stun rifle off from where it hung on the back of the knapsack, keeping it studiously pointed toward the ground and his finger nowhere near the trigger, and shook it for emphasis.

"You don't need to do anything more than point — and shoot with a gun. Don't shoot your friends, don't shoot yourself and don't forget about the safety, whatever you do," he instructed. Years in the War before he had died left him with equal parts healthy respect, disgust and instinct when dealing with a firearm. He did not want to be handling it (even if it really did only stun), yet would not forego the chance at protection because of his own aversion. Liam would deal with his nerves as best he could. "Can't handle it, then don't carry it. We don't need any accidents on our hands now."

He responded with a look at the man. Did he look like he was capable of holding a firearm? He wasn't even going to attempt. He could use the knife good enough to cut meat if need be, but that was about it. The gun would remain in his pack. He didn't trust the tremble in his hands to even hand it over as he adjusted the pack slightly. "Right," he said, "I'll stay out of the way."

Sighing, Liam nodded and holstered the gun. It hadn't been just for Flemming's benefit, and he hoped the others caught on to what he had been saying. He wrung his hands in his pockets and cast his eyes toward the distance they would need to travel.

"Just stick with the group," he said, giving a quick glance and smile for the man. He couldn't blame him for being frightened, though it looked something more than that. It didn't matter; they were stuck with each other and would have to deal with whatever attitudes or morals everyone held. "We'll be fine."

Mal had seen bleak. Mal was intimately familiar with bleak. This was somewhere entirely past bleak.

She'd taken the weapons and the compass and the silly goggles and the sunscreen; she'd listened to the impromptu - what was it - stun gonne demonstration; she'd wondered if she should perhaps have stayed and looked around more - but the only way out was through, supposedly, and the more answers she found in the near future the better.

There was dust in her teeth already. She grimaced and raised a hand lazily. "Are we going, then?"

Oh, Garrett had seen bleak-- in the form of death, destruction and not knowing how the future will unfold. He lived through bleak with the eyes of the boy named Hope.

He supposed that he can do it again, the knife feeling heavy but almost familiar in his hand. The stun gun however... Guns were far larger in Cocoon and Pulse. But he knew how to operate one, take it apart, clean it, and put it back together, ammunition, barrel and extensions and all.

"I suppose we shall be going if we want to get anywhere."

"Oh, good." Setting her teeth, Mal pulled out the compass again. Apparently it would show them where to go. She was, of course, not thrilled to be taking direction through a wasteland from a compass that didn't even know how to point Hubward, but it didn't appear she had a lot of choice.

Still, the way forward was fairly intimidating. She allowed herself the briefest look back to the entrance of the Cave. At least she wouldn't burn in there.

Oh, well. Onwards and forwards, she supposed; someone had to do it. With her most practiced saunter, she slipped past the man who'd spoken and headed into the wilderness - but not so fast that she couldn't be caught up.

Any other being might have called the landscape "hellish," but Balthazar had seen Hell. The real Hell, with its many different lands full of pain, suffering, torment, and of course, its enemies. Although the angel (former, it's former now) had to give this skillet the Workers here called the Overworld some credit; it certainly was nothing to sneeze at. Especially now that he could no longer travel where he liked at will and was now (un)comfortably stuck in his human vessel.

Still, though, he supposed jumping into the proverbial frying pan couldn't be that bad if it was leading away from the Cave. Despite the stifling climate, Balthazar breathed deep and made his way forward.

"How wonderful for them to let us work on our tans."

Gabriel had taken a rifle, knife and the pack with a mocking smile, though whether it was mocking himself or the Workers it was hard to tell. When he hefted the knife it was at least somewhat reminiscent of his sword; he slung the rifle over his back and strapped the knife's sheath to his arm.

He couldn't deny he was eager to get out of that blasted cave, so he strode forward, cheerful and jaunty and with an air that said he would have been humming with sheer pleasure except he just wasn't. (Not a note.)

Then they reached the surface proper and he stopped short, the sight of it like a punch to the gut. Now he knew why that phrase said what it did. The land before them was--there was no other word for it--raped. Sure, there were parts of Espas which were kind of hot and deserty and scrubby, but the sort of desert it had been had life in it. This was just ... rock and dust. And glass, of all things. It was wrong and it left chills all down his spine--a sensation he never wanted to feel again, thanks very much.

"This isn't what it's supposed to look like." The words came out before he could stop them.

The old Doctor had refused the weapons. Really, he was an old man (even if by Gallifreyan standards he could still be considered a youth), how would he even manage a knife? It was too big and unweildy for him to trust himself with it for smaller things. The gun would've been easier, but he remained firm in his refusal until they gave in. The rest he took, slinging the pack over his shoulder. At least they didn't expect him to carry a tent; he was already concerned with his ability to keep up with the rest of the group with what he did have to carry.

He followed the others out of the cave, toying with the compass and, once the sun hit, was glad of his tendancy to dress more conservatively. Once he caught a proper view of the terrain, well. He'd seen similar, and simply shrugged off the desolation, getting his bearings easily enough with that compass. "This will come in handy, won't it?" he commented to himself, a smug smile forming across his lips.

Hearing Gabriel's comment, the Doctor glanced over and approached the man, brow quirked with obvious curiosity. Gabriel wasn't one for books, so unless the man had caught pictures of the place elsewhere... "How is it supposed to look?" he asked.

Gabriel waved a hand vaguely but emphatically at the landscape, struggling for words. "Not like this," he finished at last, irritable and strangely unnerved. "Green. Foresty. Fieldsy. And okay, with the occasional scrap of desert. Even that was nothing like this. There's nothing here. No life."

Just desolation. The archangel realised just how disconcerted he'd sounded and checked himself. It took him a moment, frowning, to realise it wasn't just the memory of what should have been here that was making him feel like this. It was the desolation, period. The scar on the land. It had been a long, long time since he'd done much with the land itself instead of with those populating it, but he still remembered what the world had been like back then.

Wild. Open. Lush. Dangerous, yes, but dangerous because of the sheer amount of life in it. And beautiful for all that danger. This ... this made his human heart clench with the thought of everything his Father had made that had been destroyed. He hadn't been expecting that reaction.

"But at least we won't have any trouble cooking meals," he added with an attempt at levity, trying to rearrange his expression into something more upbeat and cheerful. He didn't quite make it; couldn't quite help the hurt in his eyes as he looked out over the landscape.

"Hmm, yes. I imagine there should be more flora, but this does give me some theories as to the possible nature of the disaster." The Doctor glanced about as he spoke, but returned his attention to Gabriel fairly quickly, brows furrowed with a bit of a squint. "You sound as though you've seen it first-hand," he commented, matter-of-factly. Did it really bother this man that the land was so devastated? That seemed... surprising, from one such as this, but everyone had their surprises, and the Doctor had to admit he barely knew Gabriel.

The joke at least got a soft chuckle out of the Doctor. "Yes, the heat may become an issue." And the sun. At least they'd included some sunblock, hah.

"So do I," Gabriel said darkly. Communication. Dreams. The idea, and transmitting it. He'd used to do all that, once. He'd always had a soft spot for great inventors because of that. And he knew, very well, just what sorts of things humanity could invent that could do this kind of thing.

"Though I have to admit the glass is a surprise," he added, glancing at one particular spike and cocking his eyebrow at it. Then he looked back at the Doctor with a blink. "I ... have."

He frowned. Huh. So that's what they must've planted in his head this time around. It felt ... right. Real. Like the last one, except it was in a way both more unnerving and less. His last memory hadn't belonged to any part of him; once its intensity had worn off, it had been almost amusing how anachronistic the memory had truly been. Amusing, but frightening because of how little it fit and how well they had made it fit.

This was different. Two thousand years spent wandering the Earth different. Before then, countless millennia flying over it, passing out messages and--before humanity--dwelling in Dad's creation. This kind of memory, knowing the landscape, the world his Father had made ... it was his. Gabriel's. And that it belonged to Sylvester too made him uncomfortable on a totally different level.

"I got taken in a few days ago," he said, a little absently because he was sorting through his impressions of the surface and what it ought to be.

"It's not so surprising. Rocks high in silicates that melt due to extreme temperatures and cool rapidly form into glass, much like these," he explained, his hand motioning towards that spike. It was interesting to see, but the ideas he had of what may have caused it made him uneasy. All he could do was hope it had been the humans who'd done it to themselves, and not of extraterestrial origin, which would mean the threat could still be out there.

But he was letting his thoughts get away from him.

Again, his attention turned back to focus on Gabriel. "Taken in?" he asked, clearly confused, but after a few moments of thought, his expression turned to a mix of concern and annoyance. Gabriel had seen it, this world, before the disaster. The Doctor doubted it had been through time travel. "Memory manipulation?"

"Huh." He probably should've known that, but what could he say? It'd been a while. The information got sorted and the list of weapons humanity could possibly have used to fuck themselves over got shorter. Aliens? Eh, it was possible. Supernaturals? Ditto. Especially if there were angels involved.

Gabriel kinda hoped not.

He snorted, throwing the Doctor an amused glance, because it was either that or keep on being depressed and-or bitter, and they wouldn't want that, would they? No. "You actually sound disappointed there, bucko."

Okay, so the 'not sounding bitter' thing didn't really work. Damn.

He took a look at his own compass to make sure that she was actually on the right path, before taking after the woman in a brisk jog.

As Hope, he hadn't done this for quite a while. Sure, he can still play within his mind how he'd flipped open a switchblade for the first time, and even used a gun as an adult when the monsters got far too close for comfort during one of his expeditions... But he didn't know if Garrett did. They looked alike, but the way the bodies had grown up were different.

... Anxiety was a horrible, horrible thing, he decided, and pushed all thoughts out of his head in favor of surviving each moment.

"I'm Garrett. Garrett Ross."

Since they would be stuck together for the journey, he thought that he might as well learn her name in case he'd need to yell at her to duck or something similar.

"Oh, but I am," the Doctor retorted, tone harsher than he'd intended in response to the bitterness. His expression, and tone, softened quickly and he shook his head. "Not with you, I assure you. With a society that thinks this sort of thing is acceptable. I'd heard of it, certainly, but I hadn't seen it in action." Not knowingly, at any rate, and that thought only worried him more.

"Is it distinguishable? From your real memories?" Whatever pretenses he'd held in the cave of their memories being dreams was gone, with the guard force not around to do anything about it, and he really was concerned about how these new memories affected people.

Shading his eyes, Doul stood briefly surveyed the land before him, taking in the sight and trying to match it to anything he'd seen or heard of before. He would know the Scar from a thousand miles away and surely he would be able to feel the Cacotopic Stain leeching his mind away and twisting his body? Perhaps he is further still, trapped somehow beyond Nova Esperium and into the lost lands of Bered Kai Nev. He wonders if when they enter the desert, the ground will be littered with gearships and the chitinous heads of dead khepri women or if the sun and sand have already ground them back into dust.

Since his awakening in the cave, Doul (now Downing) has kept quiet and to himself. There was no great gap between his rising and being pushed out into the desert. They have been armed and while these godspit bastards saw fit to take his engine and sword, he feels confident enough that if the guards did not lie, at least a portion of their team will make it to their destination.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 1 of 24

smaller patch of fading sky [ open ]

Day 1 (May 1st)

Day 2 (May 2nd)

Day 3 (May 3rd)

Day 4 (May 4th)

Day 5 (May 5th)

Day 6 & 7 (May 6th / 7th)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject