10-03-2015, 12:46 PM
The barometric pressure plummets by several fleeting millibars, just like that. Incredible.
Cold air arcs through the pale blue of the stratosphere before descending once again to torment the frozen earth below, whipping up gusts of icy powder over the fields. Winds from above course from extraordinarily high temperatures to much lower ones, surging around the leaden heavens as if through the veins of some colossal unseen beast.
Falling droplets of any present moisture that are caught up in these winds immediately freeze, crystallize, and then are promptly dashed upon the ground. Relentless gales jettison several inches of snow across the whole of the Frozen Fields in less than ten hours while Jade Harley sleeps soundly in her bed.
The white-furred wampa, which is native to this area, would be nearly impossible to detect under such trying conditions; the ice dragons slumber in their secluded mountain caves. The velocity of snowfall spins swiftly out of control, entire cloudlets of vapor joining the chilling deluge.
Jade’s tower windows are flush with pale white frost and the odd spirographic snowflake. Clouds spread like a fleecy grey coat over the sky from horizon to horizon, unbroken by the warm golds or dusky indigoes that would be present in a more temperate climate. The mountains cut a dark and foreboding shape against the sky.
Wind howls down the mountainside, storms of bitter ice and snow picking up to buffet a crew of motley travelers. They have trudged on across many treacherous miles of slippery slopes and steep cliff faces, now, with heavy packs weighing down upon their shoulders and icicles hanging from their beards.
There are four of these determined trekkers, all of dwarven birth yet varying significantly in nobleness and familial ties. At this time, they are engaged in a quest for precious metals that have been rumored to lie on this side of the grit-addled mountain range.
The eldest of the squadron, Gregor Fulvousbolt, has recently concluded his two hundred and twelfth year of living. His sawdusty beard reaches past his knees and is greatly weighed down with decorative plaits of bejeweled gold, all passed down from generations long before his time. They have been so well looked after that not a speck of grainy rust has appeared on their noble shiny surface.
Although his voice is loud and brasher than a bull in a china shop, his calloused hands are able to meticulously assemble the tiniest and most delicate appendages of a mechanical cricket.
Following shortly behind this imposing figurehead is Caddock Sandyberyl, having just gained his warrior’s marks after nearly eighty years of apprenticeship under the Fulvousbolt clan. His eyes glint a steely blue, dark eyebrows like fuzzy caterpillars lowered over them. At one hundred and eighty two years old, Caddock has a keen eye for fumbling mistakes in even the sturdiest of his opponents, as well as a finely-crafted claymore sagging from his belt.
Glaring steadfastly off into the snowy wastes, another dwarvish fellow with a fiery red beard jostles the last member of the party aside, seemingly taking no notice of him at all. Of course, he really does, as dwarves are rarely ignorant of their kin. His name is Kenan Badgerburrow, and he is nearly ninety years old and just a little too big for the bronzy armor strapped tightly across his barrel-round chest.
Nevertheless, he wears it with pride. His younger brother, the jostle-ee, isn’t fit for these sorts of excursions and should have remained safely at home, in his humble opinion. It is very likely that they will fall into a Trollish skirmish, and he just knows that mother would never forgive him if anything were to happen to the squirrelly buffoon.
Said squirrelly buffoon, with a scrappy fur hat tugged down low over his ears and a glinting silver blade tucked clumsily into the scabbard at his hip, happens to be the first to notice the enormous pillar rising up out of the snowy gloom. His name is Treacy Badgerburrow, and he is barely sixty eight years of age with the barest hint of a beard beginning to line his jaw. He has earned the embarrassing moniker “Big Virgin” among his peers for having zero experience in almost all fields possible.
“Halloo,” Treacy cries, pointing excitedly at the obelisk-like structure, his hazel eyes bright with enthusiasm. “Look there, brother! Et’s a tower, just as the Men build!”
Indeed it is. When the company comes to a halt as one, they are all able to view the white stone tower jutting up through the dreary-coloured cloud cover. It plunges down into a heretofore indistinguishable portion of land, smothered by snowfall and the absolute whiteness of the vapors coalescing above, and so they are unable to see whether it has a distinct base or entrance.
After some murmuring amongst themselves, the group decides to investigate with the utmost caution. The last powerful Prime to venture into the Frozen Fields was murderous, and allied with the Trolls to boot— a whole dwarven village utterly destroyed and many bright lives lost forever. They must take great care to ensure that this sort of tragedy does not happen again.
The company begins to make the arduous journey down the mountainside.
the old man…. HASS THE FLAME signing on to Personality Processor;
Logging into server Beta; Registered System Tag “hi grandpa!! :D you remember the password, right??”;
Password Required. Submit Pass: ----- --
>“TALLY HO”.
Password Accepted.
You are now signed on.
Hass “The Flame” Harley regards the dwarven trespassers standing several yards away with the utmost suspicion. They, too, look upon him with similarly distrustful looks.
He has been monitoring their progress across the mountainside for most of the ten hours that his granddaughter has been asleep, save for a good five minutes where he had brought about a manual shutdown to scare off the purplish-pink hummingbirds that had decided to settle upon his shoulder plates. Their steps had been slow and the snow thicker than molasses, but he can definitely tell that these stout fellows have a right respectable constitution.
This does not indicate in any way, however, that they mean well towards his first-rate granddaughter. He will have to keep a close eye on these ones.
His processors pick up some kind of verbal murmuring, and he lends an ear to catch on to whatever they’re mumbling amongst themselves about, now. Unsurprisingly, he is the topic of discussion.
“See, look at it! It’s watchin’ us, ah say to ye. Ah’m not settin’ foot near it, axe or no!” A rather scrawny lad in a scruffy fur hat insists, punctuating each word with a hearty tug at the equally thin beard hanging down from below his chin.
A chap with a rotund belly and rosy red cheeks speaks next. “Et cannae mean us any harm. Look, et hasn’t even come after us yet. Et’s probably just seein’ after the tower!” He pats a calloused hand against the armor plated across his plump middle as if to prove some kind of point, the reddish braids in his beard rebounding tunefully off of the brass mail.
“Why can’t we just ask et what et’s got to do with the tower?” Another one of the company suggests.
They all pause to look contemplatively at Grandpabot. In return, Grandpabot doesn’t move an inch, the permanent smile etched across his faceplate giving nary a twitch or smirk.
His forehead severely creased with worry, the rust-bearded dwarf shakes his head. “Nah, lad. Too risky.”
The stalemate endures.
The light in Jade Harley’s bedchamber is dim, especially with the window drawn tightly shut as it is. Soft snores permeate the otherwise soundless room, occasionally interposed with the muffled wailing of the wind through the tower walls. A floor below, Becquerel sits at the foot of the stairs, his ears perked and his posture alert and vigilant.
Jade wakes up with an unbecoming snort to find that her cheek is plastered to her elbow by a thin stream of drool. She hurriedly sits up to rectify this, her dark hair a tangled mess and her glasses making a desperate leap for freedom over the edge of the bed during all the commotion.
When there is some more resistance against this action than she would have expected, Jade looks down to note with sleep-addled confusion that somehow she has ended up underneath the soft sky-patterned covers. There is a densely-fluffed pillow propped behind her head for good measure.
The tell-tale pitter-pattering of claws across hard linoleum clues her in— Bec must have tucked her in like he always used to whenever she fell asleep in some silly old place. If she were wearing her glasses, she probably would see him approaching from the top of the stairwell. As it is, Jade can only see unfocused, blurry masses of flooding color, mixing sloppily together like the paints of an artist’s palette.
As she goes about stretching her arms high above her head and letting out a roaring yawn, Jade’s back lets out a few satisfying, yet astonishing cracks. There is a small amount of burning soreness stemming from the motion, but that will fade with time. It has been so long since she’s slept properly! She ought to really try to go about making a habit out of this.
Well, Jade thinks as she searches blindly around for her glasses. For as long as I keep having sweet dreams, anyways.
Her dreams were truly very nice— and so vivid, too! She can almost smell the earthy soil, can almost feel the salty sea breeze ruffling coolly through her hair and about the delicate shells of her ears. They were… peaceful, warm, soothing dreams. Positively golden. Up until the part where her Grandpa died, anyway.
Finally, she fumbles her glasses onto her face, wincing as the red lights of her Junior Compu-Sooth Spectagoggles flicker to dazzling holographic life and cast a harsh glare across the contours of her face. Her green eyes squeeze tightly shut as she waits for the lenses to automatically adjust to a dimmer brightness setting according to the time of day. Jade had programmed that particular feature in long ago, and boy is she glad that she did!
Kudos to you, past self! Jade thinks appreciatively. She’s no Time player, but at least she can say that much.
At this point Becquerel has started urging her out of bed, tugging at her sleeves and nosing wetly at her cheeks. Jade scritches idly behind his ears as she goes through her morning messages, of which there are exactly twenty four. Some are from a new person, too! She hopes this means that they will all be good friends, even if it’s only through internet correspondences. The god-child has a distinct feeling that she will need all of the friends she can get in this strange universe, because alienating everyone right off the bat by being mean would be just plain silly.
Plus, they’re really helpful! She had no idea about who those mysterious folks might be, but at least she has two possibilities now. Jade really hopes they aren’t trolls— she has a distinct feeling that these ones aren’t Alternian trolls, although she also knows that the ones she has come to know as friends can be just as murderous given the right circumstances and motivation.
Jade pats Becquerel on the head.
“I really hope we’re not headed into mortal peril,” she tells him, voice grave and face utterly deadpan.
Becquerel whines something at her that she can’t decipher at all, mostly because if she tried it would likely fry her brain. Face splitting into an impish grin, Jade imitates his response to the best of her ability, nonetheless, only with 10% more of a sarcastic inflection added to it for a little ironic flair.
The white-furred wolfdog sneezes at her, shaking his head reproachfully. Jade giggles and claps her hands together in delight, her slippers sparkling as she kicks up her feet. She hops up from where she has been sitting on the edge of the bed, carefully composing a response to her PesterOmni memo as she goes.
Okay, that was a total lie. She’s not being careful at all— actually, she’s just word-vomiting whatever comes to mind. Hopefully things will still turn out for the better!
Frowning at the soggy, muddy pile of snot yellow and torn fuzz that has become of her mittens where they lay at the foot of the bed, Jade looks accusingly at Bec. He watches her right back.
Seriously, he has the perfect poker face. And, inexplicably, the most adorable puppy-dog eyes. Without eyes.
As she glowers down at the ruined mittens that Becquerel has chewed to bits, Jade’s stomach growls, and so she switches her frowning scrutiny to her belly, instead. One half of her brain yips and barks at her for a distressingly rare steak to be brought to the table post haste, while the other remarks that a spot of cabbage or squash would be just as agreeable.
Jade sighs, admittedly torn between the two options. Her diet had mostly consisted of plants long before, but the canine portion of her nature begs and whines for meat. She can’t go out hunting, not without a hunting rifle— besides that, killing a poor, defenseless creature wouldn’t be something she would ever want to do, anyways.
At least not if said poor, defenseless creature hasn’t attacked her first!
But what is that funny scent that has just curled so tantalizingly about her nose? There is a warm, sweet smell coming from somewhere, like a mixture between pancake batter sizzling on a stovetop and a field of sunny dandelions… the Witch of Space turns her head to look at Becquerel again, a question already babbling off of her lips, when she stops short.
A small green pouch sits in-between his paws, an open corn husk belying the golden treasure that lies inside. It is corn, freshly prepared and giving off a lovely aroma of warmth and homeliness.
“Is that for me?” Jade asks, her fuzzy white ears pricked smartly up. She suddenly fully grasps that wow, is she just starving on this fine morning. Her stomach feels as if it is about to begin eating at its own lining!
In answer, Becquerel quizzically cants his head to the side; His neon green tongue lolls out playfully over his teeth. Jade squints perplexedly at him, searching for any gimmicks.
“How did you…” Jade begins, before she abruptly stops herself from further pursuing that vein of questioning. Why is she even bothering to ask? Breakfast in bed, heck yes! Or, she supposes, breakfast in the general vicinity of her bed.
She stoops down to scoop up the big green cornhusk, effectively cradling the pile of corn in her palm. As she does so, Jade pats the side of Bec’s muzzle, pulling her fingers away just in time to avoid getting dog slobber dribbled all over them when he moves to lick her hand.
As Jade munches happily on the golden pieces of corn gifted unto her by her best friend in the whole wide world, she starts to look around her room for any spare winter clothes. primordialPersistence was right! Hypothermia is a real concern. She should really invest in more winter wear if she plans to stay here for much longer, no matter how warm and comfy her god-tier pajamas are.
Well, she has to admit that they aren’t so comfy anymore. In fact, she might even venture as far to say that they are sort of rumpled and stale, especially after her excursions through the snowy wilds. She will have to clean them at some point, that’s for sure. But, that presents the problem of what she will wear in the interim.
Her Squiddlesneaks and Squiddlejacket are an option, but wearing bright red in a supposedly hostile area is about as bad as wearing pitch black all the time. At least then she could hunker down and pretend to be a rock or something. Or, well, that was one of the ideas she had come up with. Er.
Jade casts a wary glance down at her ruby red slippers, nibbling anxiously at her lower lip. But her god-tier outfit is sooo pretty and cool! How could she possibly devise anything as fancy or wonderful?
“Oh!” Jade claps her hands together, the cheery effect of the gesture a tad muffled by the pouch of corn clasped in one of her hands. “I know just the thing!”
She could take her super fancy Three in the Morning dress, make winter clothes with it, and keep her sparkly slippers to boot! She just knows that this will be the fanciest outfit ever. Maybe she can even wear it for more than just special occasions this time around?
Jade shoos Bec out of the room and slips out of her grubby old clothes. While it isn’t really possible to remove the god-tier insignia and general colour palette from her wardrobe now— some odd feature of SBURB that insists on following her across dimensions— Jade is willing to give it a try!
Her toes curl up on the cool tile floor, chilly gooseflesh rising up all over her arms and legs. She had better hurry this process up before she freezes to death! That would be such a ridiculous way to die, almost as absurd as trying to swim in lava.
Closing her eyes and humming a cheerful tune under her breath, Jade thinks about what she would like to wear. A swathe of black fabric to cover herself with, darker than the hollow space between the stars, draping over her shoulders with a hood and looping smartly back up just above her ankles. Oh, and it simply must be festooned with little green teardrop sequins, glittering like dozens of diamonds alight with starfire! Maybe her Space symbol can be placed near her chest area, under a fuzzy ruff of thick black wool?
The cold draft that has been wafting over her gradually ceases to be over the next couple of minutes, accompanied shortly in its departure by the amorphous rainbow gleaming of twisting omnilium. Jade’s eyes flutter open, a small smile on her lips as she takes in the sight of the brand new star-dappled parka she is now wearing, accented with seams of sizzling neon green around the loose sleeve ends and dark cowl. Her hood is long and splits into two, just like her god-tier robes.
“Bec, I’m decent now!” she hollers down the steps of the stairwell, scooping her god-tier outfit up into her arms and glancing around for a place to stuff it. Her house didn’t really have a laundry hamper to begin with, and so she resorts to tossing it gracelessly behind a potted hibiscus plant along with the sodden mittens. She’ll take care of washing them later— there are much more important things to be done right now!
For one thing, she will have to reprogram the Transportalizers with a passcode. Jade has a Bad Feeling about leaving it open for just anyone to use. The secrets of the Harley family will only be imparted to the most trusted and loyal of visitors! Naturally, Karkat is automatically one of those special people. She will have to remember to message him the code later.
Besides that, it would also be a pretty neat advantage for Jade. If someone has to hike all the way up the stairs to get to her, maybe she will have time to escape with her gadgets and Squiddle plushes! Although, she isn’t really sure how she will land on the ground safely from so high up.
Just as Jade begins to take the first step down the flight of stairs, Bec sticks his nose into the room as he’s coming back up. She tuts impatiently at him with a click of her tongue, rolling her eyes in mild exasperation, and so he turns tail and heads back down with a sullen huff.
Once she arrives at the base of the staircase, Jade sets about working the side of the Transportalizer open with a fingernail, gently sliding the barely-visible seam there aside. She busily digs several varyingly colored wires out, tongue poking industriously out from between her teeth as she works. Bec snuffles at the top her head every once in a while, as if he wants to tell her something important, but Jade stubbornly waves him off.
Finally, everything is all set to go, as neat and tidy as Jade thinks possible. The girl presses the Transportalizer’s side back in, her hands a good deal more smeared with dark-colored grease than before. She doesn’t even want to know what that stuff is from. She stands up from where she has been laying heavily upon her side on the floor, shaking a little life into her limbs from the rigid position she’s been in. Her hair is a bit mussed up, but her clothes are thankfully still tremendously stylish.
Grabbing ahold of her warm and fuzzy hood and tugging it over her head, Jade steps up onto the Transportalizer’s shiny metal platform. A noise that sounds curiously like a dial tone rings out, carrying on uninterrupted for approximately thirteen seconds before a computerized voice pipes up. It is clearly synthesized to carry the most emotionally neutral cadence possible.
“Password, please.”
Jade clears her throat as softly as possible, looking secretively this way and that before replying in a clandestine stage whisper: “The Alcubierre Drive is a crapshoot and deep space is no place for a shout-out to Shakespeare or references to that damned yellow piece of schmuck bait from Carcosa.”
“Password accepted.” the computer reports back, voice a persistent drone. Jade grins at Bec as she disappears in a whoosh of blazing green light.
The world is pulled out from under her feet— or, rather, Jade is plucked off the ground and spatially drop-kicked all the way down to her garden atrium’s floor level. She lands with a small stumble and a light scuffing of her slippers across the floor. She must have messed up the coordinates a tad during her tinkering!
Another flashfire of green signals Bec’s arrival almost as soon as Jade has stepped off of the landing platform.
“Not bad for a first trial, eh, Bec?” Jade asks, paying more attention to her Spectagoggles than his response.
The white wolfdog sneezes uproariously at her. Jade frowns, tapping impatiently at the side of her glasses with her index finger when they glitch for some weird reason.
“That bad, huh?” Oh well! She’ll have to fix it up later. It’s not like a faulty teleportation pad can result in severe, oftentimes messy discorporation or anything.
Distractedly shooting off another message on PesterOmni with her Spectagoggles, Jade heads into the first northernmost wing of the atrium. She passes all of her beloved gourds, flowers, and springtime vegetables by, popping the last piece of corn into her mouth as she goes. She’ll measure how skewed her arrival range is on the next trip up.
It takes her about half an hour to scamper down the rest of the staircases and arrive in the grand foyer, Bec right on her heels. She tosses the soggy cornhusk into the roaring fireplace, which results in the fire spitting out a burst of singeing sparks.
Before she steps outside, Jade adjusts her sleeves and makes sure everything is in place for a snow day outing, already beginning to feel a little warm from just standing in the general vicinity of the large fireplace. A few tiny beads of sweat build on her brow, and she just barely resists the canine urge to stick her tongue out and start up a bout of ridiculous panting.
Goshdarnit, Jade, you have enough sweat glands! Jade mentally chides herself. There’s really no need to try and regulate your body temperature that way. Also, ew.
“Huh,” Jade says as an aside to Bec while the door takes its sweet time in sliding open, her lips pursed in thought. “I wonder where Grandpabot is this morning.” At least, she thinks that it might be morning. Wow, she needs to figure this stuff out!
The door to the tower slides open; a handful of stray flakes blow in. Though the volcano and frogs of LOFAF are gone, one facet of it remains; the unnatural, bitterly glacial winter, with its subzero temperatures and howling winds. The Frozen Fields are startlingly reminiscent of the Witch’s planet— she has yet to find out if this is a good omen or not.
Jade steps outside, and receives her answer by way of witnessing a group of stodgy little men edge towards her grandfather as if he were a ticking time bomb. Which he arguably may be, seeing as Jade has literally no fucking idea of how her alternate self made his very existence a possibility. He could conceivably blow up at any time.
Incredible.
Tiny bits of windborne fragments rain down from the sky, submicroscopic shards of ice peppering the ground as well as Jade’s dark coat. Delicate spider-webbing patterns of ice and snow cling fast to her sleeves. With a wave of her hand and a rapid shake of her head, the snow is brushed off of her shoulders and out of her hair.
“Grandpa!” Jade exclaims, starting towards him with quick strides taken across the downy snow. “Were you standing out here all night?” There is an air of disapproval to her tone. ‘The youth has become the caretaker’ and all that.
“Why, yes, my dear girl! I had to keep watch over these hooligans— they were about to go prowling most stealthily about our property during the night,” Is his cheery reply, although he punctuates each word with a meaningful pat to his gun.
Jade rolls her eyes, turning to look inquisitively at her visitors. She takes in their frosty bedraggled appearance with some concern, but wills it down into an open, earnest smile. Thankfully, she does not unconsciously stoop so as to better accommodate their height.
She thinks that these people may be the dwarves primordialPersistence told her about— they sure do seem pretty stout and industrious. They certainly don’t look like any trolls she has ever laid eyes on, either, all steel and leather and furs.
“Hi there! I’m Jade Harley, how can I help you?” Her coat glitters prettily as her body sways a little while she speaks. Wow, what a fantastic investment of omnilium!
The company of dwarves looks at her as if they are trying to puzzle something rather serious out. She wishes that they would just say what’s up already so she can help them out, but she supposes that waiting is just a part of life!
Just as Jade begins to suspect that she should be worried and might actually have to take primordialPersistence up on their offer, a fellow with an impressively decorated beard steps up to speak with her.
“Did ye build that there walking suit o’ armor?” he asks gruffly, inclining his head towards Grandpabot.
Grinning, Jade nods in affirmation, the dark curls around her face bouncing up with the movement. When the dwarf nearest to her looked close, he would swear later that he could see stars twinkling through their strands. “Yes! Well, I didn’t, but another version of me did. I’d imagine that it wouldn’t be all that hard for me to figure out how to do it again, though. Also, he’s my Grandpa.”
The dwarf casts his gaze off to the side, deep in thought. Like icebergs rising out of the sea mixed with interspersed sparks of veiny green spindrift, distant hills slope across the windswept landscape. The world is scabbed with deathly pale grey. The blizzard wails, still.
Bringing up a hand to tug at his rust-colored beard, a considering twist to what is visible of his wind chafed lips, the dwarf looks to his companions. They are prepared to hang onto his every word and will follow his lead in whatever decision he chooses to make.
The youngest Badgerburrow boy seems to be paying more attention to the young lass, however, and so he asks another question to distract the girl while he silently reprimands the dwarf lad with a significant lowering of his brows. The squirrely lad looks suitably abashed and ducks his head.
“Is that yer tower, then, too?” Gregor inclines his head up to regard the tall building in all of its colossal magnificence. He has truly never seen anything like it— even most buildings in the kingdom of Camelot did not reach heights such as this.
“Yep, it is!” the girl says, grinning toothily at him, her eyes crinkling merrily up at the corners. “You’re welcome to come inside, if you’d like. It looks like you lot have had one heck of an adventure!”
The noble Fulvousbolt thinks on this for a moment. Then, he speaks.
Cold air arcs through the pale blue of the stratosphere before descending once again to torment the frozen earth below, whipping up gusts of icy powder over the fields. Winds from above course from extraordinarily high temperatures to much lower ones, surging around the leaden heavens as if through the veins of some colossal unseen beast.
Falling droplets of any present moisture that are caught up in these winds immediately freeze, crystallize, and then are promptly dashed upon the ground. Relentless gales jettison several inches of snow across the whole of the Frozen Fields in less than ten hours while Jade Harley sleeps soundly in her bed.
The white-furred wampa, which is native to this area, would be nearly impossible to detect under such trying conditions; the ice dragons slumber in their secluded mountain caves. The velocity of snowfall spins swiftly out of control, entire cloudlets of vapor joining the chilling deluge.
Jade’s tower windows are flush with pale white frost and the odd spirographic snowflake. Clouds spread like a fleecy grey coat over the sky from horizon to horizon, unbroken by the warm golds or dusky indigoes that would be present in a more temperate climate. The mountains cut a dark and foreboding shape against the sky.
Wind howls down the mountainside, storms of bitter ice and snow picking up to buffet a crew of motley travelers. They have trudged on across many treacherous miles of slippery slopes and steep cliff faces, now, with heavy packs weighing down upon their shoulders and icicles hanging from their beards.
There are four of these determined trekkers, all of dwarven birth yet varying significantly in nobleness and familial ties. At this time, they are engaged in a quest for precious metals that have been rumored to lie on this side of the grit-addled mountain range.
The eldest of the squadron, Gregor Fulvousbolt, has recently concluded his two hundred and twelfth year of living. His sawdusty beard reaches past his knees and is greatly weighed down with decorative plaits of bejeweled gold, all passed down from generations long before his time. They have been so well looked after that not a speck of grainy rust has appeared on their noble shiny surface.
Although his voice is loud and brasher than a bull in a china shop, his calloused hands are able to meticulously assemble the tiniest and most delicate appendages of a mechanical cricket.
Following shortly behind this imposing figurehead is Caddock Sandyberyl, having just gained his warrior’s marks after nearly eighty years of apprenticeship under the Fulvousbolt clan. His eyes glint a steely blue, dark eyebrows like fuzzy caterpillars lowered over them. At one hundred and eighty two years old, Caddock has a keen eye for fumbling mistakes in even the sturdiest of his opponents, as well as a finely-crafted claymore sagging from his belt.
Glaring steadfastly off into the snowy wastes, another dwarvish fellow with a fiery red beard jostles the last member of the party aside, seemingly taking no notice of him at all. Of course, he really does, as dwarves are rarely ignorant of their kin. His name is Kenan Badgerburrow, and he is nearly ninety years old and just a little too big for the bronzy armor strapped tightly across his barrel-round chest.
Nevertheless, he wears it with pride. His younger brother, the jostle-ee, isn’t fit for these sorts of excursions and should have remained safely at home, in his humble opinion. It is very likely that they will fall into a Trollish skirmish, and he just knows that mother would never forgive him if anything were to happen to the squirrelly buffoon.
Said squirrelly buffoon, with a scrappy fur hat tugged down low over his ears and a glinting silver blade tucked clumsily into the scabbard at his hip, happens to be the first to notice the enormous pillar rising up out of the snowy gloom. His name is Treacy Badgerburrow, and he is barely sixty eight years of age with the barest hint of a beard beginning to line his jaw. He has earned the embarrassing moniker “Big Virgin” among his peers for having zero experience in almost all fields possible.
“Halloo,” Treacy cries, pointing excitedly at the obelisk-like structure, his hazel eyes bright with enthusiasm. “Look there, brother! Et’s a tower, just as the Men build!”
Indeed it is. When the company comes to a halt as one, they are all able to view the white stone tower jutting up through the dreary-coloured cloud cover. It plunges down into a heretofore indistinguishable portion of land, smothered by snowfall and the absolute whiteness of the vapors coalescing above, and so they are unable to see whether it has a distinct base or entrance.
After some murmuring amongst themselves, the group decides to investigate with the utmost caution. The last powerful Prime to venture into the Frozen Fields was murderous, and allied with the Trolls to boot— a whole dwarven village utterly destroyed and many bright lives lost forever. They must take great care to ensure that this sort of tragedy does not happen again.
The company begins to make the arduous journey down the mountainside.
---
the old man…. HASS THE FLAME signing on to Personality Processor;
Logging into server Beta; Registered System Tag “hi grandpa!! :D you remember the password, right??”;
Password Required. Submit Pass: ----- --
>“TALLY HO”.
Password Accepted.
You are now signed on.
Hass “The Flame” Harley regards the dwarven trespassers standing several yards away with the utmost suspicion. They, too, look upon him with similarly distrustful looks.
He has been monitoring their progress across the mountainside for most of the ten hours that his granddaughter has been asleep, save for a good five minutes where he had brought about a manual shutdown to scare off the purplish-pink hummingbirds that had decided to settle upon his shoulder plates. Their steps had been slow and the snow thicker than molasses, but he can definitely tell that these stout fellows have a right respectable constitution.
This does not indicate in any way, however, that they mean well towards his first-rate granddaughter. He will have to keep a close eye on these ones.
His processors pick up some kind of verbal murmuring, and he lends an ear to catch on to whatever they’re mumbling amongst themselves about, now. Unsurprisingly, he is the topic of discussion.
“See, look at it! It’s watchin’ us, ah say to ye. Ah’m not settin’ foot near it, axe or no!” A rather scrawny lad in a scruffy fur hat insists, punctuating each word with a hearty tug at the equally thin beard hanging down from below his chin.
A chap with a rotund belly and rosy red cheeks speaks next. “Et cannae mean us any harm. Look, et hasn’t even come after us yet. Et’s probably just seein’ after the tower!” He pats a calloused hand against the armor plated across his plump middle as if to prove some kind of point, the reddish braids in his beard rebounding tunefully off of the brass mail.
“Why can’t we just ask et what et’s got to do with the tower?” Another one of the company suggests.
They all pause to look contemplatively at Grandpabot. In return, Grandpabot doesn’t move an inch, the permanent smile etched across his faceplate giving nary a twitch or smirk.
His forehead severely creased with worry, the rust-bearded dwarf shakes his head. “Nah, lad. Too risky.”
The stalemate endures.
---
The light in Jade Harley’s bedchamber is dim, especially with the window drawn tightly shut as it is. Soft snores permeate the otherwise soundless room, occasionally interposed with the muffled wailing of the wind through the tower walls. A floor below, Becquerel sits at the foot of the stairs, his ears perked and his posture alert and vigilant.
Jade wakes up with an unbecoming snort to find that her cheek is plastered to her elbow by a thin stream of drool. She hurriedly sits up to rectify this, her dark hair a tangled mess and her glasses making a desperate leap for freedom over the edge of the bed during all the commotion.
When there is some more resistance against this action than she would have expected, Jade looks down to note with sleep-addled confusion that somehow she has ended up underneath the soft sky-patterned covers. There is a densely-fluffed pillow propped behind her head for good measure.
The tell-tale pitter-pattering of claws across hard linoleum clues her in— Bec must have tucked her in like he always used to whenever she fell asleep in some silly old place. If she were wearing her glasses, she probably would see him approaching from the top of the stairwell. As it is, Jade can only see unfocused, blurry masses of flooding color, mixing sloppily together like the paints of an artist’s palette.
As she goes about stretching her arms high above her head and letting out a roaring yawn, Jade’s back lets out a few satisfying, yet astonishing cracks. There is a small amount of burning soreness stemming from the motion, but that will fade with time. It has been so long since she’s slept properly! She ought to really try to go about making a habit out of this.
Well, Jade thinks as she searches blindly around for her glasses. For as long as I keep having sweet dreams, anyways.
Her dreams were truly very nice— and so vivid, too! She can almost smell the earthy soil, can almost feel the salty sea breeze ruffling coolly through her hair and about the delicate shells of her ears. They were… peaceful, warm, soothing dreams. Positively golden. Up until the part where her Grandpa died, anyway.
Finally, she fumbles her glasses onto her face, wincing as the red lights of her Junior Compu-Sooth Spectagoggles flicker to dazzling holographic life and cast a harsh glare across the contours of her face. Her green eyes squeeze tightly shut as she waits for the lenses to automatically adjust to a dimmer brightness setting according to the time of day. Jade had programmed that particular feature in long ago, and boy is she glad that she did!
Kudos to you, past self! Jade thinks appreciatively. She’s no Time player, but at least she can say that much.
At this point Becquerel has started urging her out of bed, tugging at her sleeves and nosing wetly at her cheeks. Jade scritches idly behind his ears as she goes through her morning messages, of which there are exactly twenty four. Some are from a new person, too! She hopes this means that they will all be good friends, even if it’s only through internet correspondences. The god-child has a distinct feeling that she will need all of the friends she can get in this strange universe, because alienating everyone right off the bat by being mean would be just plain silly.
Plus, they’re really helpful! She had no idea about who those mysterious folks might be, but at least she has two possibilities now. Jade really hopes they aren’t trolls— she has a distinct feeling that these ones aren’t Alternian trolls, although she also knows that the ones she has come to know as friends can be just as murderous given the right circumstances and motivation.
Jade pats Becquerel on the head.
“I really hope we’re not headed into mortal peril,” she tells him, voice grave and face utterly deadpan.
Becquerel whines something at her that she can’t decipher at all, mostly because if she tried it would likely fry her brain. Face splitting into an impish grin, Jade imitates his response to the best of her ability, nonetheless, only with 10% more of a sarcastic inflection added to it for a little ironic flair.
The white-furred wolfdog sneezes at her, shaking his head reproachfully. Jade giggles and claps her hands together in delight, her slippers sparkling as she kicks up her feet. She hops up from where she has been sitting on the edge of the bed, carefully composing a response to her PesterOmni memo as she goes.
Okay, that was a total lie. She’s not being careful at all— actually, she’s just word-vomiting whatever comes to mind. Hopefully things will still turn out for the better!
Frowning at the soggy, muddy pile of snot yellow and torn fuzz that has become of her mittens where they lay at the foot of the bed, Jade looks accusingly at Bec. He watches her right back.
Seriously, he has the perfect poker face. And, inexplicably, the most adorable puppy-dog eyes. Without eyes.
As she glowers down at the ruined mittens that Becquerel has chewed to bits, Jade’s stomach growls, and so she switches her frowning scrutiny to her belly, instead. One half of her brain yips and barks at her for a distressingly rare steak to be brought to the table post haste, while the other remarks that a spot of cabbage or squash would be just as agreeable.
Jade sighs, admittedly torn between the two options. Her diet had mostly consisted of plants long before, but the canine portion of her nature begs and whines for meat. She can’t go out hunting, not without a hunting rifle— besides that, killing a poor, defenseless creature wouldn’t be something she would ever want to do, anyways.
At least not if said poor, defenseless creature hasn’t attacked her first!
But what is that funny scent that has just curled so tantalizingly about her nose? There is a warm, sweet smell coming from somewhere, like a mixture between pancake batter sizzling on a stovetop and a field of sunny dandelions… the Witch of Space turns her head to look at Becquerel again, a question already babbling off of her lips, when she stops short.
A small green pouch sits in-between his paws, an open corn husk belying the golden treasure that lies inside. It is corn, freshly prepared and giving off a lovely aroma of warmth and homeliness.
“Is that for me?” Jade asks, her fuzzy white ears pricked smartly up. She suddenly fully grasps that wow, is she just starving on this fine morning. Her stomach feels as if it is about to begin eating at its own lining!
In answer, Becquerel quizzically cants his head to the side; His neon green tongue lolls out playfully over his teeth. Jade squints perplexedly at him, searching for any gimmicks.
“How did you…” Jade begins, before she abruptly stops herself from further pursuing that vein of questioning. Why is she even bothering to ask? Breakfast in bed, heck yes! Or, she supposes, breakfast in the general vicinity of her bed.
She stoops down to scoop up the big green cornhusk, effectively cradling the pile of corn in her palm. As she does so, Jade pats the side of Bec’s muzzle, pulling her fingers away just in time to avoid getting dog slobber dribbled all over them when he moves to lick her hand.
As Jade munches happily on the golden pieces of corn gifted unto her by her best friend in the whole wide world, she starts to look around her room for any spare winter clothes. primordialPersistence was right! Hypothermia is a real concern. She should really invest in more winter wear if she plans to stay here for much longer, no matter how warm and comfy her god-tier pajamas are.
Well, she has to admit that they aren’t so comfy anymore. In fact, she might even venture as far to say that they are sort of rumpled and stale, especially after her excursions through the snowy wilds. She will have to clean them at some point, that’s for sure. But, that presents the problem of what she will wear in the interim.
Her Squiddlesneaks and Squiddlejacket are an option, but wearing bright red in a supposedly hostile area is about as bad as wearing pitch black all the time. At least then she could hunker down and pretend to be a rock or something. Or, well, that was one of the ideas she had come up with. Er.
Jade casts a wary glance down at her ruby red slippers, nibbling anxiously at her lower lip. But her god-tier outfit is sooo pretty and cool! How could she possibly devise anything as fancy or wonderful?
“Oh!” Jade claps her hands together, the cheery effect of the gesture a tad muffled by the pouch of corn clasped in one of her hands. “I know just the thing!”
She could take her super fancy Three in the Morning dress, make winter clothes with it, and keep her sparkly slippers to boot! She just knows that this will be the fanciest outfit ever. Maybe she can even wear it for more than just special occasions this time around?
Jade shoos Bec out of the room and slips out of her grubby old clothes. While it isn’t really possible to remove the god-tier insignia and general colour palette from her wardrobe now— some odd feature of SBURB that insists on following her across dimensions— Jade is willing to give it a try!
Her toes curl up on the cool tile floor, chilly gooseflesh rising up all over her arms and legs. She had better hurry this process up before she freezes to death! That would be such a ridiculous way to die, almost as absurd as trying to swim in lava.
Closing her eyes and humming a cheerful tune under her breath, Jade thinks about what she would like to wear. A swathe of black fabric to cover herself with, darker than the hollow space between the stars, draping over her shoulders with a hood and looping smartly back up just above her ankles. Oh, and it simply must be festooned with little green teardrop sequins, glittering like dozens of diamonds alight with starfire! Maybe her Space symbol can be placed near her chest area, under a fuzzy ruff of thick black wool?
The cold draft that has been wafting over her gradually ceases to be over the next couple of minutes, accompanied shortly in its departure by the amorphous rainbow gleaming of twisting omnilium. Jade’s eyes flutter open, a small smile on her lips as she takes in the sight of the brand new star-dappled parka she is now wearing, accented with seams of sizzling neon green around the loose sleeve ends and dark cowl. Her hood is long and splits into two, just like her god-tier robes.
“Bec, I’m decent now!” she hollers down the steps of the stairwell, scooping her god-tier outfit up into her arms and glancing around for a place to stuff it. Her house didn’t really have a laundry hamper to begin with, and so she resorts to tossing it gracelessly behind a potted hibiscus plant along with the sodden mittens. She’ll take care of washing them later— there are much more important things to be done right now!
For one thing, she will have to reprogram the Transportalizers with a passcode. Jade has a Bad Feeling about leaving it open for just anyone to use. The secrets of the Harley family will only be imparted to the most trusted and loyal of visitors! Naturally, Karkat is automatically one of those special people. She will have to remember to message him the code later.
Besides that, it would also be a pretty neat advantage for Jade. If someone has to hike all the way up the stairs to get to her, maybe she will have time to escape with her gadgets and Squiddle plushes! Although, she isn’t really sure how she will land on the ground safely from so high up.
Just as Jade begins to take the first step down the flight of stairs, Bec sticks his nose into the room as he’s coming back up. She tuts impatiently at him with a click of her tongue, rolling her eyes in mild exasperation, and so he turns tail and heads back down with a sullen huff.
Once she arrives at the base of the staircase, Jade sets about working the side of the Transportalizer open with a fingernail, gently sliding the barely-visible seam there aside. She busily digs several varyingly colored wires out, tongue poking industriously out from between her teeth as she works. Bec snuffles at the top her head every once in a while, as if he wants to tell her something important, but Jade stubbornly waves him off.
Finally, everything is all set to go, as neat and tidy as Jade thinks possible. The girl presses the Transportalizer’s side back in, her hands a good deal more smeared with dark-colored grease than before. She doesn’t even want to know what that stuff is from. She stands up from where she has been laying heavily upon her side on the floor, shaking a little life into her limbs from the rigid position she’s been in. Her hair is a bit mussed up, but her clothes are thankfully still tremendously stylish.
Grabbing ahold of her warm and fuzzy hood and tugging it over her head, Jade steps up onto the Transportalizer’s shiny metal platform. A noise that sounds curiously like a dial tone rings out, carrying on uninterrupted for approximately thirteen seconds before a computerized voice pipes up. It is clearly synthesized to carry the most emotionally neutral cadence possible.
“Password, please.”
Jade clears her throat as softly as possible, looking secretively this way and that before replying in a clandestine stage whisper: “The Alcubierre Drive is a crapshoot and deep space is no place for a shout-out to Shakespeare or references to that damned yellow piece of schmuck bait from Carcosa.”
“Password accepted.” the computer reports back, voice a persistent drone. Jade grins at Bec as she disappears in a whoosh of blazing green light.
The world is pulled out from under her feet— or, rather, Jade is plucked off the ground and spatially drop-kicked all the way down to her garden atrium’s floor level. She lands with a small stumble and a light scuffing of her slippers across the floor. She must have messed up the coordinates a tad during her tinkering!
Another flashfire of green signals Bec’s arrival almost as soon as Jade has stepped off of the landing platform.
“Not bad for a first trial, eh, Bec?” Jade asks, paying more attention to her Spectagoggles than his response.
The white wolfdog sneezes uproariously at her. Jade frowns, tapping impatiently at the side of her glasses with her index finger when they glitch for some weird reason.
“That bad, huh?” Oh well! She’ll have to fix it up later. It’s not like a faulty teleportation pad can result in severe, oftentimes messy discorporation or anything.
Distractedly shooting off another message on PesterOmni with her Spectagoggles, Jade heads into the first northernmost wing of the atrium. She passes all of her beloved gourds, flowers, and springtime vegetables by, popping the last piece of corn into her mouth as she goes. She’ll measure how skewed her arrival range is on the next trip up.
It takes her about half an hour to scamper down the rest of the staircases and arrive in the grand foyer, Bec right on her heels. She tosses the soggy cornhusk into the roaring fireplace, which results in the fire spitting out a burst of singeing sparks.
Before she steps outside, Jade adjusts her sleeves and makes sure everything is in place for a snow day outing, already beginning to feel a little warm from just standing in the general vicinity of the large fireplace. A few tiny beads of sweat build on her brow, and she just barely resists the canine urge to stick her tongue out and start up a bout of ridiculous panting.
Goshdarnit, Jade, you have enough sweat glands! Jade mentally chides herself. There’s really no need to try and regulate your body temperature that way. Also, ew.
“Huh,” Jade says as an aside to Bec while the door takes its sweet time in sliding open, her lips pursed in thought. “I wonder where Grandpabot is this morning.” At least, she thinks that it might be morning. Wow, she needs to figure this stuff out!
The door to the tower slides open; a handful of stray flakes blow in. Though the volcano and frogs of LOFAF are gone, one facet of it remains; the unnatural, bitterly glacial winter, with its subzero temperatures and howling winds. The Frozen Fields are startlingly reminiscent of the Witch’s planet— she has yet to find out if this is a good omen or not.
Jade steps outside, and receives her answer by way of witnessing a group of stodgy little men edge towards her grandfather as if he were a ticking time bomb. Which he arguably may be, seeing as Jade has literally no fucking idea of how her alternate self made his very existence a possibility. He could conceivably blow up at any time.
Incredible.
Tiny bits of windborne fragments rain down from the sky, submicroscopic shards of ice peppering the ground as well as Jade’s dark coat. Delicate spider-webbing patterns of ice and snow cling fast to her sleeves. With a wave of her hand and a rapid shake of her head, the snow is brushed off of her shoulders and out of her hair.
“Grandpa!” Jade exclaims, starting towards him with quick strides taken across the downy snow. “Were you standing out here all night?” There is an air of disapproval to her tone. ‘The youth has become the caretaker’ and all that.
“Why, yes, my dear girl! I had to keep watch over these hooligans— they were about to go prowling most stealthily about our property during the night,” Is his cheery reply, although he punctuates each word with a meaningful pat to his gun.
Jade rolls her eyes, turning to look inquisitively at her visitors. She takes in their frosty bedraggled appearance with some concern, but wills it down into an open, earnest smile. Thankfully, she does not unconsciously stoop so as to better accommodate their height.
She thinks that these people may be the dwarves primordialPersistence told her about— they sure do seem pretty stout and industrious. They certainly don’t look like any trolls she has ever laid eyes on, either, all steel and leather and furs.
“Hi there! I’m Jade Harley, how can I help you?” Her coat glitters prettily as her body sways a little while she speaks. Wow, what a fantastic investment of omnilium!
The company of dwarves looks at her as if they are trying to puzzle something rather serious out. She wishes that they would just say what’s up already so she can help them out, but she supposes that waiting is just a part of life!
Just as Jade begins to suspect that she should be worried and might actually have to take primordialPersistence up on their offer, a fellow with an impressively decorated beard steps up to speak with her.
“Did ye build that there walking suit o’ armor?” he asks gruffly, inclining his head towards Grandpabot.
Grinning, Jade nods in affirmation, the dark curls around her face bouncing up with the movement. When the dwarf nearest to her looked close, he would swear later that he could see stars twinkling through their strands. “Yes! Well, I didn’t, but another version of me did. I’d imagine that it wouldn’t be all that hard for me to figure out how to do it again, though. Also, he’s my Grandpa.”
The dwarf casts his gaze off to the side, deep in thought. Like icebergs rising out of the sea mixed with interspersed sparks of veiny green spindrift, distant hills slope across the windswept landscape. The world is scabbed with deathly pale grey. The blizzard wails, still.
Bringing up a hand to tug at his rust-colored beard, a considering twist to what is visible of his wind chafed lips, the dwarf looks to his companions. They are prepared to hang onto his every word and will follow his lead in whatever decision he chooses to make.
The youngest Badgerburrow boy seems to be paying more attention to the young lass, however, and so he asks another question to distract the girl while he silently reprimands the dwarf lad with a significant lowering of his brows. The squirrely lad looks suitably abashed and ducks his head.
“Is that yer tower, then, too?” Gregor inclines his head up to regard the tall building in all of its colossal magnificence. He has truly never seen anything like it— even most buildings in the kingdom of Camelot did not reach heights such as this.
“Yep, it is!” the girl says, grinning toothily at him, her eyes crinkling merrily up at the corners. “You’re welcome to come inside, if you’d like. It looks like you lot have had one heck of an adventure!”
The noble Fulvousbolt thinks on this for a moment. Then, he speaks.
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Gamzee Makara Wrote:S’aight. After all, dogs have a tendency to motherfuckin’ bite.