12-14-2016, 03:17 AM
Kelly couldn't see the fog anymore - he couldn't even feel the cold, or the moisture condensing on his skin.
Whatever the mental defense he'd triggered in response to the thing in the mist's attempt to invade his mind was designed to do, this probably wasn't it. The traveler found himself tumbling through a maelstrom of misfiled memory, each sight and sensation as vivid as if he were experiencing them for the first time, dragged along by the cold phantom's psychic probe as it desperately sought in vain for something to latch on to.
Kelly was sitting at a table, in a pleasantly furnished summer-cottage, looking out a glass patio-door at a view entirely unlike the Pale Moors in every way save for the rolling hills. The landscape was green and sun-drenched, and dotted with contented-looking sheep. The air smelled of fresh-cooked eggs and morning dew, and there was a woman seated across from him, a short, athletic beauty in a bath-robe. She had strawberry-blond hair pulled back in a bun, and sparkling eyes the color and shape of almonds. The woman was half-turned away, working at an easel, paintbrush in hand. She smiled, opened her mouth to speak - and the sound of an air-raid siren came out.
The siren continued, and he refocused his attention on the briefing, trying not to be distracted by the smell of burning jungle. A penguin wearing a kamikaze bandanna and a tiny set of black military fatigues stood by his right boot, demanded he pay attention, the bird's voice a parrot-like squawk of command...
That damn parrot again. He didn't know what Braed saw in the thing. Kelly stalked across the cramped austerity of his initiate's quarters and threw a sheet over the stinking cage on his way to the shower...
... of violet-blue flames, bright as the sun, modulated plasma-shot of the highest caliber. It tore through the megacity's mag-shielding as though it wasn't even there, reducing the entire southern continent to an ocean of magma in a purple flash ...
...of lace. "Well," he said, distracted from the unparalleled view of Lake Michigan by the even more spectacular view of his wife in lingerie, "since we're up here anyway ...
...we may as well make sure we exterminate every one of them." With that grim pronouncement still ringing in the air, Kelly powered up, waves of crackling vermilion force rolling off his body, a chill spreading through the air as his power fed...
...him the most delicious cookies he'd ever had. "Talon, these are fantastic. When did you learn to bake...
...under the million-degree heat of the stellar reaction. The shock-wave hadn't even hit yet, events flowing like wax...
...ing larger in his vision as he closed in on the battlefield, a trio of giant skeletal machines, impossibly massive...
...pain in the ass. "I could split this damn planet in half," Kelly said, gesturing angrily with the putty-knife, "so why am I having so much trouble plastering this stupid...
...grin on her face. "You're forgetting something important," said the harpy, wrapping her sable wings around her naked body like a cloak.
Overcome by an intense anger, fear and deep, personal loathing he didn't even know he was capable of, Kelly hit her in the face with the lantern.
For a moment, there was darkness, and the feeling of a needle skipping on a vinyl record, a scathing, discordant jolt.
The lantern. I'm holding the lantern.
The cascade of memory resumed, tumbled around him, queing faster and faster off random associations, but Kelly was outside of it now, present but separate. Whoever that horrendous soul-sucking bitch was, his reaction to her had been strong enough to jolt him free of the undertow of recollection. He was fairly certain he'd never actually hit her in the face with an oil-lamp.
None of this was real. It had been once, but right now the traveler was standing in a fog bank, somewhere in a ghoul-haunted pocket-continuum, just waiting like a glassy-eyed chump for some werewolf to come along and rip his face off.
Kelly closed his eyes. It didn't affect what he was perceiving - a smear of raw chaos, places and voices rising to a dreadful crescendo - but the idea of it aided his concentration.
There.
Now that he'd removed himself from the vicious riptide of his own memories, he could detect the Other, still caught in the flow. It flittered from one place to another in a frantic attempt to find a way out, stirring the pot, creating the chaos, but was unable to defeat Kelly's malfunctioning defenses, to interact in any meaningful way with the traveler's fractured mindscape.
Kelly pictured a door. He focused on the flailing, tattered mental probe, and with a mighty effort of will, he threw the stranger in the mist out of his mind.
Silence and darkness, and the clear, heady scent of fog. Kelly opened his eyes.
Whatever the mental defense he'd triggered in response to the thing in the mist's attempt to invade his mind was designed to do, this probably wasn't it. The traveler found himself tumbling through a maelstrom of misfiled memory, each sight and sensation as vivid as if he were experiencing them for the first time, dragged along by the cold phantom's psychic probe as it desperately sought in vain for something to latch on to.
Kelly was sitting at a table, in a pleasantly furnished summer-cottage, looking out a glass patio-door at a view entirely unlike the Pale Moors in every way save for the rolling hills. The landscape was green and sun-drenched, and dotted with contented-looking sheep. The air smelled of fresh-cooked eggs and morning dew, and there was a woman seated across from him, a short, athletic beauty in a bath-robe. She had strawberry-blond hair pulled back in a bun, and sparkling eyes the color and shape of almonds. The woman was half-turned away, working at an easel, paintbrush in hand. She smiled, opened her mouth to speak - and the sound of an air-raid siren came out.
The siren continued, and he refocused his attention on the briefing, trying not to be distracted by the smell of burning jungle. A penguin wearing a kamikaze bandanna and a tiny set of black military fatigues stood by his right boot, demanded he pay attention, the bird's voice a parrot-like squawk of command...
That damn parrot again. He didn't know what Braed saw in the thing. Kelly stalked across the cramped austerity of his initiate's quarters and threw a sheet over the stinking cage on his way to the shower...
... of violet-blue flames, bright as the sun, modulated plasma-shot of the highest caliber. It tore through the megacity's mag-shielding as though it wasn't even there, reducing the entire southern continent to an ocean of magma in a purple flash ...
...of lace. "Well," he said, distracted from the unparalleled view of Lake Michigan by the even more spectacular view of his wife in lingerie, "since we're up here anyway ...
...we may as well make sure we exterminate every one of them." With that grim pronouncement still ringing in the air, Kelly powered up, waves of crackling vermilion force rolling off his body, a chill spreading through the air as his power fed...
...him the most delicious cookies he'd ever had. "Talon, these are fantastic. When did you learn to bake...
...under the million-degree heat of the stellar reaction. The shock-wave hadn't even hit yet, events flowing like wax...
...ing larger in his vision as he closed in on the battlefield, a trio of giant skeletal machines, impossibly massive...
...pain in the ass. "I could split this damn planet in half," Kelly said, gesturing angrily with the putty-knife, "so why am I having so much trouble plastering this stupid...
...grin on her face. "You're forgetting something important," said the harpy, wrapping her sable wings around her naked body like a cloak.
Overcome by an intense anger, fear and deep, personal loathing he didn't even know he was capable of, Kelly hit her in the face with the lantern.
For a moment, there was darkness, and the feeling of a needle skipping on a vinyl record, a scathing, discordant jolt.
The lantern. I'm holding the lantern.
The cascade of memory resumed, tumbled around him, queing faster and faster off random associations, but Kelly was outside of it now, present but separate. Whoever that horrendous soul-sucking bitch was, his reaction to her had been strong enough to jolt him free of the undertow of recollection. He was fairly certain he'd never actually hit her in the face with an oil-lamp.
None of this was real. It had been once, but right now the traveler was standing in a fog bank, somewhere in a ghoul-haunted pocket-continuum, just waiting like a glassy-eyed chump for some werewolf to come along and rip his face off.
Kelly closed his eyes. It didn't affect what he was perceiving - a smear of raw chaos, places and voices rising to a dreadful crescendo - but the idea of it aided his concentration.
There.
Now that he'd removed himself from the vicious riptide of his own memories, he could detect the Other, still caught in the flow. It flittered from one place to another in a frantic attempt to find a way out, stirring the pot, creating the chaos, but was unable to defeat Kelly's malfunctioning defenses, to interact in any meaningful way with the traveler's fractured mindscape.
Kelly pictured a door. He focused on the flailing, tattered mental probe, and with a mighty effort of will, he threw the stranger in the mist out of his mind.
Silence and darkness, and the clear, heady scent of fog. Kelly opened his eyes.