06-15-2016, 01:45 AM
In that first dizzy moment Jade saw only Tartaros, blood oozing from in-between the plates of his armor, lying prostrate in what might as well have been an ocean of sticky red. Tartaros and this indigo morass of movement churning behind him, innumerous and tapered emerald-blue eyes glittering from within the gloom–
She felt the screech rather than heard it, frozen air torrential and clapping into her face like a wave of saltwater, and then the floor opened up under their feet. It was too fast, too goddamn fast, Jade’s grip on Rebecca’s hand gave way to empty space, and her flailing attempts to search for the Little Sister in the dark were all for naught. A surge of breath whistled through her parted lips in a shout, the sound lost to the buffeting of the wind and the dark chasm walls sealing them within the depths of the earth.
Her powers were lost to her, caught up within the confines of the shock trembling through her limbs and pure, unadulterated fear. If Jade couldn’t get out of this hairy situation, couldn’t fly or even teleport away, then how were the others supposed to escape? What about Tartaros, injured and bleeding out all over the floor? What about Karkat?!
How could she have let this happen? How could she have done this to her friends?
Thorny rosebush murmurs coiled inside of her inner ear, soft and welcoming yet at the same time excruciatingly strident. The young Witch shut her eyes against the interminable darkness falling like dusky velvet curtains all around her, teeth gritted and a thin trickle of something wet dribbling over her lips, down her chin.
“Bec!” Jade shrieked, the tangles of her hair nearly strangling her, the pit of her stomach bottoming out somewhere that was down, down, down – rag-dolling her way through a raw, bleeding void in space and time. The cry came out as little more than a sobbing plea over the howling winds and discordant shuffling, but it did the trick.
There was a lightning-green flash and a hazy blur of warmth. Noticeably not at full power, Becquerel could do little more than slow their descent to something more cushiony and buoyant – but just as noticeably, this was not at all what Jade had wanted. The First Guardian was weakened, however, and it would be unfair of her to ask for him to try once more. Luckily, the ground did not seem to be too far below; within the next two minutes, the group was unceremoniously deposited on a thick, luscious jumble of vines.
A cold nose immediately pressed against Jade’s cheek, prompting the dark-haired girl to flinch away from where she lay on the crest of a particularly thick vine. Her green eyes glanced down from some high, imperceptible apex of the long passage they had just tumbled through, fixing upon a blur of fuzzy white sparking furiously beside her.
Everything was a muddle of colors generously sprinkled with swimming darks and lights. After another nudge, Jade reached out with shaking hands to gently take her glasses from Bec, pushing the slobbery and slightly mugged-up lenses onto her face.
Her eyesight refocused to find Rebecca sitting atop Becquerel’s back, thankfully safe and sound, peering inquisitively down at the Witch’s rumpled clothing and appearance. Dizzily, Jade rolled her right shoulder and sat up, rubbing at the juncture between her neck and arm that seemed to have developed a serious case of the aches. She would have to see about applying a hot pad or something after this lousy excuse for an adventure was over and done with! All in all, though, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
But then Jade recalled the last few moments before their fall and oh, fuck, Tartaros –
“Here we are,” Valerie said chirpily, jaunting across her line of sight in a sweep of vibrant green. He didn’t appear to have been fazed by their descent in the slightest and Jade – almost – hated him for it. “Home sweet home!”
His hands were upraised towards something, like some weird rendition of the Pride Rock scene from The Lion King. A wave of despair seemed to wash over everything within the immense cavern they were at the center of, painting the rocks and plant life in blues and rainy day grays. Jade had to blink hard to keep from staring too closely at the all-seeing gloom settling within every spare crevice, pooling in places where shadows shouldn’t be– dancing, Jade thought, gleeful and spilling their spiny thorns and tangles everywhere, reveling in the rank fear of their captive audience –
Tearing her eyes away from the crew’s surroundings, Jade stumbled to her feet and kicked her way through several obnoxious loops of plant matter, desperately clawing her way towards where could see Rock and Tartaros were, Grundy keeping a motionless vigil over them. She was vaguely aware of her Guardian and charge following close behind.
“I’m so sorry,” Jade gulped around the lump in her throat, only then becoming aware of the stream of gore trailing down the front of her dress from her nose, mouth and ears as she knelt beside the fallen Astartes, hands splayed uselessly across his scratched chestplate. “I didn’t think this would happen, could never have dreamed it, I just—“
A rattling sigh interrupted her babbling stream of apologies. Jade blinked as the armored tin can suddenly shifted, exchanging a distinctly concerned glance with Rock. Perhaps Tartaros was delirious; movement was the last thing he needed to put himself through in his delicate condition. How much blood had he lost? Too much, for sure. What could he possibly be doing—
Then a gun was leveled squarely at her face. Only, no, it wasn’t— the nozzle careened a bit to the left, the bolter’s slug intended for something behind her.
Her chin turned just slightly towards it, a blur of slim movement thrashing in the corner of her eye.
The gunshot sounded sharp and clear in her ears. What little strength Tartaros had left he had used to plunge a round into a purple-webbed tentacle snaking towards across the cavern floor, an eruption of viscous green fluid splattering over them. But there were numerous others, strewn across every available surface in profuse, slippery lattices of vegetation, and they assuredly could not evade or fend them all off.
Tartaros’ arm slumped to the ground with a resounding clang soon afterward. For a few seconds Jade stared blearily down at where the legionnaire’s weapon lay, discarded and bereft.
Realization spilled over her like hot tar. A panicked gasp rattling within her chest, Jade fumbled to lean close enough to his helm so that she could listen for the passage of breath. She sighed when she heard it, steady and full, albeit very, very faint.
Jade directed a fierce glare towards where Valerie and Grundy stood a few paces away. Valerie gazed serenely back at her, the hulking form of Grundy seeming especially imposing beside the mage’s more dexterous trimness, completely unbothered by her ire.
“How unfortunate. Well, I suppose there are other games we can play, if tag truly isn’t to your liking! How about hide and seek? We’ll even give you a head start!” Valerie asked, voice bright and syrupy, his palms clasped over his heart.
“There’s nowhere to hide and you know it,” Jade snapped, words splintering woefully about halfway through, split open like an egg knocked from its nest. Thousands of eyes watched from the cavern walls and floor, flickering open one by one in little butterfly flutters upon vines and the emaciated remnants of things that appeared to have been long shriveled and dead, painted thickly with briny acidblood.
“All too true,” the plant mage sighed, tapping one perfectly-manicured nail to his chin. “Though it is fun to pretend every now and again—“ He turned quite suddenly away, then, the springy green sweep of his robes rustling in the void left behind by his chatter, head tilted as if he were listening to some private radio signal.
The Witch blinked once, then twice for good measure at Valerie’s abrupt silence. Her green eyes found Rock’s blue ones over the apparently unconscious body of Tartaros. In a way that wasn’t consoling at all, he appeared to be just as mystified.
An irritated huff chirped through the silence, effectively shattering their shared confusion.
“If you’ll excuse me for a moment,” Valerie said, flapping his perfect lyrist hands in their general direction. He seemed distracted by something, the blue of his eyes curving and appearing artfully narrow in the hazy lighting. The plant mage prowled towards what appeared to be a large, stickily oozing bellflower that looked as if it could fit at least three fully grown people inside, bestowing it with a bemused stare once he drew nearer.
It was at that point Jade noticed that the flower was freezing. It turned completely crystal-white, petals becoming brittle and fringed with an unforgiving glimmer of frost that glinted like diamonds. By the looks of the hair-line fractures splintering along its curved shape, it seemed as if something was trying desperately to break free.
The Witch decided that they weren’t going to wait around to see if it was friend or foe, and even that decision further deepened the ache within her heart. There had to be some way to free from Grundy and Valerie from this mountain’s dreadful thrall, but how? Likewise, the more she continually searched for signs of Karkat about the icy, leaf-strewn prison, the further her lips turned downward when he was disappointingly absent.
Taking ahold of one of the Space Marine’s arms, surprised at the effort it took to lift it for even a second, Jade began to drag Tartaros further away from where the two eldritch mouthpieces were prodding at the rupturing blossom. It was significantly easier to disentangle themselves from the vines while whatever was controlling Valerie and Grundy was distracted, but one creeping plant remained stubbornly tied to the marine’s torso, pinning him to the floor.
Jade strained against the sticky wrappings binding Tartaros to the ground by engaging in a mostly one-sided bout of tug-of-war, grunting with exertion, and then slumped forward over him, breathing raggedly. She tried tugging at the vines themselves, but all that did was succeed in rubbing the skin of her hands raw until they were a painful, stinging red.
Her lips split into a strained toothy grin when the vine was abruptly loosened with Rock’s assistance. Together, the blue-armored kid and dog-eared starchild were able to tug Tartaros to an area not completely overgrown with vegetation, mysteriously dappled with shimmering patterns of ice and snow. As the blood from his wounds began to speckle the snow, Jade glanced worriedly over her shoulder as a high-pitched screech rent the air.
Whatever was inside that plant pod was very pissed. Soft blue whorls of light and gusts of cold air gushed out from between the— now completely frozen solid— petals, the rustling of what sounded like feathers beating against the uncomfortable warmth provided for the flora within the grotto. The forms of Grundy and Valerie cut a stark contrast against the sharp light, arrestingly swamped in shadow.
Forcing herself to look away from the sight to regain her bearings, Jade’s eyes alighted upon a much smaller bud, its folding still pink and plush with springtime splendor.
There.
Should’ve known we would run into some lousy eldritch dangerbeasts, Karkat thought bitterly.
He lay tucked within the soft-petaled bulb of a plant, stuck as if he were wedged between two couch cushions. Only the pounding headache hemorrhaging behind his eyelids pierced through the thick cloud of blackness surrounding him, painting glorious splatters of light where none should have been. Struggling was futile, pointless to an excruciating degree of inanity.
The cherry-blooded troll supposed it was a tiny miracle that there were no longer any rail-thin trolls wearing nothing but loincloths pawing at him, though. The clown would be thrilled.
Obviously the others would search for him. However, Karkat was fairly sure that those bumbling assholes couldn’t rally together to save him even if they had an entire flight of imperial drones at their beck and call, and he wasn’t about to hold out hope for them yet.
Hope was a mistake that he could not afford. He had to stay conscious, stay awake, but try not to be surprised when the very worst came knocking at his door. Even if he didn’t know what the very worst would be, yet, cocooned as he was in sweet-smelling petals.
A rustling— no, a scraping came from somewhere above him. Surely it was some unspeakable horror seeking to devour his squishy innards with its impressive multitude of stomachs on standby, scrabbling its way in. With any luck, his death would be quick and (mostly) painless and he would be crunched up in a single bite.
Karkat wasn’t exactly known among his peers for his incredible abundance of luck, but to say that the smiling face which greeted him from above was anything less than lucky would have been a gross understatement.
“Karkat!” Jade exclaimed, expression radiant and blooming despite the trail of blood staining part of her face a deep rust. “Boy, am I glad to see you!”
There wasn’t any substantial light to speak of in that dank chamber, none haloing about her head to make her seem the least bit angelic. That was perfectly alright; Karkat’s imagination could fill in the blanks just as well.
“Yeah, it's a Gristmas miracle. Help me up already, will you?”
She felt the screech rather than heard it, frozen air torrential and clapping into her face like a wave of saltwater, and then the floor opened up under their feet. It was too fast, too goddamn fast, Jade’s grip on Rebecca’s hand gave way to empty space, and her flailing attempts to search for the Little Sister in the dark were all for naught. A surge of breath whistled through her parted lips in a shout, the sound lost to the buffeting of the wind and the dark chasm walls sealing them within the depths of the earth.
Her powers were lost to her, caught up within the confines of the shock trembling through her limbs and pure, unadulterated fear. If Jade couldn’t get out of this hairy situation, couldn’t fly or even teleport away, then how were the others supposed to escape? What about Tartaros, injured and bleeding out all over the floor? What about Karkat?!
How could she have let this happen? How could she have done this to her friends?
Thorny rosebush murmurs coiled inside of her inner ear, soft and welcoming yet at the same time excruciatingly strident. The young Witch shut her eyes against the interminable darkness falling like dusky velvet curtains all around her, teeth gritted and a thin trickle of something wet dribbling over her lips, down her chin.
“Bec!” Jade shrieked, the tangles of her hair nearly strangling her, the pit of her stomach bottoming out somewhere that was down, down, down – rag-dolling her way through a raw, bleeding void in space and time. The cry came out as little more than a sobbing plea over the howling winds and discordant shuffling, but it did the trick.
There was a lightning-green flash and a hazy blur of warmth. Noticeably not at full power, Becquerel could do little more than slow their descent to something more cushiony and buoyant – but just as noticeably, this was not at all what Jade had wanted. The First Guardian was weakened, however, and it would be unfair of her to ask for him to try once more. Luckily, the ground did not seem to be too far below; within the next two minutes, the group was unceremoniously deposited on a thick, luscious jumble of vines.
A cold nose immediately pressed against Jade’s cheek, prompting the dark-haired girl to flinch away from where she lay on the crest of a particularly thick vine. Her green eyes glanced down from some high, imperceptible apex of the long passage they had just tumbled through, fixing upon a blur of fuzzy white sparking furiously beside her.
Everything was a muddle of colors generously sprinkled with swimming darks and lights. After another nudge, Jade reached out with shaking hands to gently take her glasses from Bec, pushing the slobbery and slightly mugged-up lenses onto her face.
Her eyesight refocused to find Rebecca sitting atop Becquerel’s back, thankfully safe and sound, peering inquisitively down at the Witch’s rumpled clothing and appearance. Dizzily, Jade rolled her right shoulder and sat up, rubbing at the juncture between her neck and arm that seemed to have developed a serious case of the aches. She would have to see about applying a hot pad or something after this lousy excuse for an adventure was over and done with! All in all, though, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
But then Jade recalled the last few moments before their fall and oh, fuck, Tartaros –
“Here we are,” Valerie said chirpily, jaunting across her line of sight in a sweep of vibrant green. He didn’t appear to have been fazed by their descent in the slightest and Jade – almost – hated him for it. “Home sweet home!”
His hands were upraised towards something, like some weird rendition of the Pride Rock scene from The Lion King. A wave of despair seemed to wash over everything within the immense cavern they were at the center of, painting the rocks and plant life in blues and rainy day grays. Jade had to blink hard to keep from staring too closely at the all-seeing gloom settling within every spare crevice, pooling in places where shadows shouldn’t be– dancing, Jade thought, gleeful and spilling their spiny thorns and tangles everywhere, reveling in the rank fear of their captive audience –
Tearing her eyes away from the crew’s surroundings, Jade stumbled to her feet and kicked her way through several obnoxious loops of plant matter, desperately clawing her way towards where could see Rock and Tartaros were, Grundy keeping a motionless vigil over them. She was vaguely aware of her Guardian and charge following close behind.
“I’m so sorry,” Jade gulped around the lump in her throat, only then becoming aware of the stream of gore trailing down the front of her dress from her nose, mouth and ears as she knelt beside the fallen Astartes, hands splayed uselessly across his scratched chestplate. “I didn’t think this would happen, could never have dreamed it, I just—“
A rattling sigh interrupted her babbling stream of apologies. Jade blinked as the armored tin can suddenly shifted, exchanging a distinctly concerned glance with Rock. Perhaps Tartaros was delirious; movement was the last thing he needed to put himself through in his delicate condition. How much blood had he lost? Too much, for sure. What could he possibly be doing—
Then a gun was leveled squarely at her face. Only, no, it wasn’t— the nozzle careened a bit to the left, the bolter’s slug intended for something behind her.
Her chin turned just slightly towards it, a blur of slim movement thrashing in the corner of her eye.
The gunshot sounded sharp and clear in her ears. What little strength Tartaros had left he had used to plunge a round into a purple-webbed tentacle snaking towards across the cavern floor, an eruption of viscous green fluid splattering over them. But there were numerous others, strewn across every available surface in profuse, slippery lattices of vegetation, and they assuredly could not evade or fend them all off.
Tartaros’ arm slumped to the ground with a resounding clang soon afterward. For a few seconds Jade stared blearily down at where the legionnaire’s weapon lay, discarded and bereft.
Realization spilled over her like hot tar. A panicked gasp rattling within her chest, Jade fumbled to lean close enough to his helm so that she could listen for the passage of breath. She sighed when she heard it, steady and full, albeit very, very faint.
Jade directed a fierce glare towards where Valerie and Grundy stood a few paces away. Valerie gazed serenely back at her, the hulking form of Grundy seeming especially imposing beside the mage’s more dexterous trimness, completely unbothered by her ire.
“How unfortunate. Well, I suppose there are other games we can play, if tag truly isn’t to your liking! How about hide and seek? We’ll even give you a head start!” Valerie asked, voice bright and syrupy, his palms clasped over his heart.
“There’s nowhere to hide and you know it,” Jade snapped, words splintering woefully about halfway through, split open like an egg knocked from its nest. Thousands of eyes watched from the cavern walls and floor, flickering open one by one in little butterfly flutters upon vines and the emaciated remnants of things that appeared to have been long shriveled and dead, painted thickly with briny acidblood.
“All too true,” the plant mage sighed, tapping one perfectly-manicured nail to his chin. “Though it is fun to pretend every now and again—“ He turned quite suddenly away, then, the springy green sweep of his robes rustling in the void left behind by his chatter, head tilted as if he were listening to some private radio signal.
The Witch blinked once, then twice for good measure at Valerie’s abrupt silence. Her green eyes found Rock’s blue ones over the apparently unconscious body of Tartaros. In a way that wasn’t consoling at all, he appeared to be just as mystified.
An irritated huff chirped through the silence, effectively shattering their shared confusion.
“If you’ll excuse me for a moment,” Valerie said, flapping his perfect lyrist hands in their general direction. He seemed distracted by something, the blue of his eyes curving and appearing artfully narrow in the hazy lighting. The plant mage prowled towards what appeared to be a large, stickily oozing bellflower that looked as if it could fit at least three fully grown people inside, bestowing it with a bemused stare once he drew nearer.
It was at that point Jade noticed that the flower was freezing. It turned completely crystal-white, petals becoming brittle and fringed with an unforgiving glimmer of frost that glinted like diamonds. By the looks of the hair-line fractures splintering along its curved shape, it seemed as if something was trying desperately to break free.
The Witch decided that they weren’t going to wait around to see if it was friend or foe, and even that decision further deepened the ache within her heart. There had to be some way to free from Grundy and Valerie from this mountain’s dreadful thrall, but how? Likewise, the more she continually searched for signs of Karkat about the icy, leaf-strewn prison, the further her lips turned downward when he was disappointingly absent.
Taking ahold of one of the Space Marine’s arms, surprised at the effort it took to lift it for even a second, Jade began to drag Tartaros further away from where the two eldritch mouthpieces were prodding at the rupturing blossom. It was significantly easier to disentangle themselves from the vines while whatever was controlling Valerie and Grundy was distracted, but one creeping plant remained stubbornly tied to the marine’s torso, pinning him to the floor.
Jade strained against the sticky wrappings binding Tartaros to the ground by engaging in a mostly one-sided bout of tug-of-war, grunting with exertion, and then slumped forward over him, breathing raggedly. She tried tugging at the vines themselves, but all that did was succeed in rubbing the skin of her hands raw until they were a painful, stinging red.
Her lips split into a strained toothy grin when the vine was abruptly loosened with Rock’s assistance. Together, the blue-armored kid and dog-eared starchild were able to tug Tartaros to an area not completely overgrown with vegetation, mysteriously dappled with shimmering patterns of ice and snow. As the blood from his wounds began to speckle the snow, Jade glanced worriedly over her shoulder as a high-pitched screech rent the air.
Whatever was inside that plant pod was very pissed. Soft blue whorls of light and gusts of cold air gushed out from between the— now completely frozen solid— petals, the rustling of what sounded like feathers beating against the uncomfortable warmth provided for the flora within the grotto. The forms of Grundy and Valerie cut a stark contrast against the sharp light, arrestingly swamped in shadow.
Forcing herself to look away from the sight to regain her bearings, Jade’s eyes alighted upon a much smaller bud, its folding still pink and plush with springtime splendor.
There.
---
Should’ve known we would run into some lousy eldritch dangerbeasts, Karkat thought bitterly.
He lay tucked within the soft-petaled bulb of a plant, stuck as if he were wedged between two couch cushions. Only the pounding headache hemorrhaging behind his eyelids pierced through the thick cloud of blackness surrounding him, painting glorious splatters of light where none should have been. Struggling was futile, pointless to an excruciating degree of inanity.
The cherry-blooded troll supposed it was a tiny miracle that there were no longer any rail-thin trolls wearing nothing but loincloths pawing at him, though. The clown would be thrilled.
Obviously the others would search for him. However, Karkat was fairly sure that those bumbling assholes couldn’t rally together to save him even if they had an entire flight of imperial drones at their beck and call, and he wasn’t about to hold out hope for them yet.
Hope was a mistake that he could not afford. He had to stay conscious, stay awake, but try not to be surprised when the very worst came knocking at his door. Even if he didn’t know what the very worst would be, yet, cocooned as he was in sweet-smelling petals.
A rustling— no, a scraping came from somewhere above him. Surely it was some unspeakable horror seeking to devour his squishy innards with its impressive multitude of stomachs on standby, scrabbling its way in. With any luck, his death would be quick and (mostly) painless and he would be crunched up in a single bite.
Karkat wasn’t exactly known among his peers for his incredible abundance of luck, but to say that the smiling face which greeted him from above was anything less than lucky would have been a gross understatement.
“Karkat!” Jade exclaimed, expression radiant and blooming despite the trail of blood staining part of her face a deep rust. “Boy, am I glad to see you!”
There wasn’t any substantial light to speak of in that dank chamber, none haloing about her head to make her seem the least bit angelic. That was perfectly alright; Karkat’s imagination could fill in the blanks just as well.
“Yeah, it's a Gristmas miracle. Help me up already, will you?”
New to the Omniverse? Don't be afraid to PM me for assistance!
Gamzee Makara Wrote:S’aight. After all, dogs have a tendency to motherfuckin’ bite.