01-30-2018, 11:31 AM
(This post was last modified: 02-02-2018, 11:48 PM by Kelly MacAryn.
Edit Reason: correcting some of this sloppiness
)
By the time the psychic made it to within half-a-kilometer of the clearing which hosted the Nexus gate,
the canopy had thinned out considerably. Lacking suitable footholds, he was forced to abandon the treetops in favor of picking his way through the dense undergrowth.
The sharp decrease in his rate of travel bothered Kelly less than he would have thought, though branches pulled at the damp blue fabric of his sleeveless cotton shirt and ground-level vines did their very best to entangle his booted feet. His nose was filled with the bright smells of chlorophyll and healthy soil, and his psychic powers and higher senses could handle the tightly seemingly-impassable foliage and hazardous footing.
He only got jumped once. A great night-black feline shape fell on him from above, intent on ambushing the strange primate, which it had been tracking for some time. Kelly's haunt shouted a vivid still-frame warning, and the psychic pulsed his somatic awareness, generating a weak, rapidly-expanding blast-wave of telekinetic force. The blossoming hemisphere would have been invisible if it weren't for the layer of compressed vegetation roiling on its leading edge, and the very surprised panther pressed against its curved horizon. The dome petered out after several meters, sending the stunned cat and the vegetative slurry sailing off into the understory amidst a hushed flurry of unnatural zephyrs: stray telekinetic harmonics which rustled the leaves of nearby trees and dislodged a colony of small, brightly colored nocturnal snails from their deciduous daytime shelters.
Standing in what was now a small circle of partially-flattened boscage amidst a rain of tiny, colorful gastropods, a thin smile crept like a thief across the travelers face. There was a brief commotion in the brush as the big cat righted itself in a furious twisting scramble and shot up the trunk tree, fleeing the scene.
Compared to the jungles of Nebula Space, this place was positively welcoming.
He moved on.
There were also more practical reasons Kelly didn't mind the change from high-flying acrobatics to forest-floor trailblazing: homeostatic danger signals from his legs and abdomen were inundating his haunt. There was no pain as such, but the academic fact of his condition sent a grimace flickering across the shadowy angles of his rugged face. His lanky, athletic physique was very nearly inhumanly powerful and Kelly was skilled enough at using it to take full advantage of things like momentum and negative muscular action, but even so he'd been leaping hell-for-leather through the treetops for over an hour. His burgeoning post-human abilities hadn't yet reached a level where that sort of effort was trivial; Before returning to the Nexus, he was going to need to take some time to rest his muscles and recover his strength.
The glade which held the gate that would lead him back into the bizarre white space at the center of the Omniverse hadn't changed significantly since the last time Kelly was there. It was still dominated by a carpet of ferns, but now they stood tall, shoots extended, leafy fronds spread wide to greet the sun. A sharp, minty smell hung in the air. Some of the broader plants, their leaves like green lace, were almost waist-high. As the traveler stepped from between the green underbrush and gnarled grey-and-brown trunks of the tightly-packed treeline the layer of ground-cover rustled furiously, some small mammal fleeing his approach.
The clearing was awake this time, its many denizens scurrying and buzzing and feeding and pooping and doing every other thing that small, ground-dwelling creatures could do within their little fern-based kingdom. To a man with Kelly's senses, it was a hell of a show, now with an added emotional dimension since the advent of his returned telepathy, an opera written in infrared light and primitive psychological impulse.
Dragonflies the size of sparrows took off from within one of the largest ferns, their wings thrumming loudly as they fled the scene. The elongated tongue of some unclassified amphibian snatched one of them out of the air and dragged it down among the lesser fronds in a whip-cracking instant of bungee-cord violence almost too fast to track. A cloud of smaller insects arose for a moment, disturbed by the sudden action, and then settled again. Nestled within a narrow rotting log, concealed by the ferns, a terrified vole was trying unsuccessfully to get laid.
Kelly selected a tree with the fewest nobbly roots breaking the surface around its base; It was right on the edge of the clearing, opposite the gate. He removed the double-headed battleaxe from his back, and propped it against the trunk, harness and all, mildly surprised at what a relief it was to take the thing off. The traveler sat down beside the weapon, reclining against the mossy bark of the tree with one knee bent and his iron-shod staff resting in the crook of his arm. He plucked one of the colorful snails from earlier out of his ponytail and set it down on a nearby leaf. Then, struck with renewed appreciation of the weft and swirl of tiny lives spread out before him, shining so brightly in his extrasensory awareness, he settled in to rest, to think and to watch the show.
the canopy had thinned out considerably. Lacking suitable footholds, he was forced to abandon the treetops in favor of picking his way through the dense undergrowth.
The sharp decrease in his rate of travel bothered Kelly less than he would have thought, though branches pulled at the damp blue fabric of his sleeveless cotton shirt and ground-level vines did their very best to entangle his booted feet. His nose was filled with the bright smells of chlorophyll and healthy soil, and his psychic powers and higher senses could handle the tightly seemingly-impassable foliage and hazardous footing.
He only got jumped once. A great night-black feline shape fell on him from above, intent on ambushing the strange primate, which it had been tracking for some time. Kelly's haunt shouted a vivid still-frame warning, and the psychic pulsed his somatic awareness, generating a weak, rapidly-expanding blast-wave of telekinetic force. The blossoming hemisphere would have been invisible if it weren't for the layer of compressed vegetation roiling on its leading edge, and the very surprised panther pressed against its curved horizon. The dome petered out after several meters, sending the stunned cat and the vegetative slurry sailing off into the understory amidst a hushed flurry of unnatural zephyrs: stray telekinetic harmonics which rustled the leaves of nearby trees and dislodged a colony of small, brightly colored nocturnal snails from their deciduous daytime shelters.
Standing in what was now a small circle of partially-flattened boscage amidst a rain of tiny, colorful gastropods, a thin smile crept like a thief across the travelers face. There was a brief commotion in the brush as the big cat righted itself in a furious twisting scramble and shot up the trunk tree, fleeing the scene.
Compared to the jungles of Nebula Space, this place was positively welcoming.
He moved on.
There were also more practical reasons Kelly didn't mind the change from high-flying acrobatics to forest-floor trailblazing: homeostatic danger signals from his legs and abdomen were inundating his haunt. There was no pain as such, but the academic fact of his condition sent a grimace flickering across the shadowy angles of his rugged face. His lanky, athletic physique was very nearly inhumanly powerful and Kelly was skilled enough at using it to take full advantage of things like momentum and negative muscular action, but even so he'd been leaping hell-for-leather through the treetops for over an hour. His burgeoning post-human abilities hadn't yet reached a level where that sort of effort was trivial; Before returning to the Nexus, he was going to need to take some time to rest his muscles and recover his strength.
The glade which held the gate that would lead him back into the bizarre white space at the center of the Omniverse hadn't changed significantly since the last time Kelly was there. It was still dominated by a carpet of ferns, but now they stood tall, shoots extended, leafy fronds spread wide to greet the sun. A sharp, minty smell hung in the air. Some of the broader plants, their leaves like green lace, were almost waist-high. As the traveler stepped from between the green underbrush and gnarled grey-and-brown trunks of the tightly-packed treeline the layer of ground-cover rustled furiously, some small mammal fleeing his approach.
The clearing was awake this time, its many denizens scurrying and buzzing and feeding and pooping and doing every other thing that small, ground-dwelling creatures could do within their little fern-based kingdom. To a man with Kelly's senses, it was a hell of a show, now with an added emotional dimension since the advent of his returned telepathy, an opera written in infrared light and primitive psychological impulse.
Dragonflies the size of sparrows took off from within one of the largest ferns, their wings thrumming loudly as they fled the scene. The elongated tongue of some unclassified amphibian snatched one of them out of the air and dragged it down among the lesser fronds in a whip-cracking instant of bungee-cord violence almost too fast to track. A cloud of smaller insects arose for a moment, disturbed by the sudden action, and then settled again. Nestled within a narrow rotting log, concealed by the ferns, a terrified vole was trying unsuccessfully to get laid.
Kelly selected a tree with the fewest nobbly roots breaking the surface around its base; It was right on the edge of the clearing, opposite the gate. He removed the double-headed battleaxe from his back, and propped it against the trunk, harness and all, mildly surprised at what a relief it was to take the thing off. The traveler sat down beside the weapon, reclining against the mossy bark of the tree with one knee bent and his iron-shod staff resting in the crook of his arm. He plucked one of the colorful snails from earlier out of his ponytail and set it down on a nearby leaf. Then, struck with renewed appreciation of the weft and swirl of tiny lives spread out before him, shining so brightly in his extrasensory awareness, he settled in to rest, to think and to watch the show.