04-19-2017, 03:41 PM
Luci kneels above the stiff form of The Humble Sage. She inspects his rigid hands, and sees an ugly green color creeping into his veins. There is only one person she can think of who might be able to heal the man, and he lay paralyzed and comatose in front of her.
Luci makes a decision. In half a heartbeat, she takes a deep breath, shakes her spray can, places it against her forehead, and withdraws a thin silvery thread. She then touches the silvery strand to the Sage's temple, and dives deep into his dream-within-a-dream.
***
Luci creeps cautiously through the Sage's subconscious. The quiet, dignified dream-plane manifests as a labyrinth of wood paneled doors and winding staircases, creaking floorboards and flickering candles that never give off enough light and give off no heat at all. The light they do cast has thin spindles of poisonous green running through them, like the toxin in the Sage's veins. Luci mutes her own bioluminescencent glow, so as not to attract any...anything.
Luci keeps her wits about her. She thinks she has a trail; certain candles burn brighter than the others, and when she follows them she sees open doors and misplaced dust. She leaves numbered stickers as she rounds corners, hoping her graffiti doesn't affect the Sage's subconscious too much.
Luci eases open another door, leading to another empty room containing six doors, two of which are on the ceiling. Her frustration builds; this room, like every other in this maze, it is uniform in it's uniqueness. Not a single room in this maze holds the exact same square footage and number and placement of doors, yet each room is made of the same hardwood floors and bare wooden walls, all unfurnished, lit only dimly by candlelight.
Luci takes the door to the left and emerges into a hallway lined with same faded wood paneling as every other hallway. And the end of the hallway is a pair of double doors.
Luci places sticker number eight on the doors, where it glows a pale yellow. She opens the doors as quietly as she can, but they creak loudly in protest. She closes them behind her, and finds herself in a very strange, very large room. Like the rest of the maze, it is lit by candles placed about fifty feet apart from each other, but the candles continue on to the left and right as far as she could see. In front of her, a few hundred feet away, is another door on another wall extending off into the left and the right infinitely.
Luci walks quickly and confidently across the room, her heart pounding in her head. She tries not to look up; although the light from the candles could not possibly reach so high as to illuminate the ceiling of the room, her soft footfalls echo disturbingly, giving her the creeping impression the ceiling is higher than she can imagine. Again, Luci is struck by the sheer scale of the maze, it's very vastness weighing heavily on her at all times like a cosmic presence. She keeps her eyes on the ground until she comes to the set of doors on the other side of the giant room. She is reaching for the handle when she stops, and stands very still.
On the door in front of her is a sticker with a yellow number eight. Three huge claw marks scar the door, slashing through the sticker.
Luci pushes the door open.
She sees an identical giant room, with candles stretching out as far as she could see on either side, and directly ahead of her, across the room, Luci sees herself.
Luci cocks her head to to the left, and sees her double do the same. She turns behind her, and sees herself again, this time craning to look behind her as well,, mirroring Luci's every move. The remnants of the number eight sticker starts to flap in a sudden inexplicable breeze.
Luci sprints to the left, the candles becoming a flickering blur as she raced down the impossibly long tunnel. She starts to feel like the walls are closing in on her, and she is right, the room is narrowing. The candles are indeed crowding her on either side, and the echo of her high-tempo footsteps is becoming flatter as the ceiling gets lower and lower. She sees a door in front of her, perhaps miles ahead. Behind her, the gentle breeze tickles her neck.
The door is closer than it appears, the strange narrowing tunnel giving the illusion it is much farther off. The door itself is very small, maybe a square foot altogether. Luci crouches down and opens it quickly, trying to shove a leg through. The breeze has a slow, steady rhythm to it now, and it reminds Luci of labored breathing. She twists desperately, shape-shifting as small as she can, shimmying her hips through the tiny door, and then her arms, and then her head, and then closing it behind her.
The breeze is gone.
Luci lets her body ease back into it's normal size, watching the door shrink in front of her as she grows. She realizes she is at the entrance to a spiral staircase. There is nothing else in the room, no doors, just the same creaking floors and decaying walls. The staircases has no railing, just step after step lit only by the dim candlelight.
***
How many miles did Luci walk down that staircase? How many hours did she spend, crouched in fear, avoiding the attention of a mild breeze? How many doors did she open, how many corners did she turn, how many hallways did she walk? How many days or years had she spent trapped down here, loosing her what was left of her mind?
***
Luci finds The Humble Sage in a very, very, very large library. She thinks it might seem smaller to him, as he is currently twice Luci's size, but even still, it must be more than anyone could ever read in a hundred lifetimes.
He is sitting at a desk, his face lit by a single candle, pouring over several books at once, and muttering to himself.
"Thrice-damned Sufi Continuationists," he rasps. The candle shakes in his hand as moves it to examine another book, and Luci sees the lines of toxic green creeping up his neck. "They never met a Mazdakist Epicureanist, though, did they? No."
Luci approaches calmly and slowly, giving the Sage plenty of time to see her. She walks up to his desk, and has to place her hands on it and stand on her tippy toes to peer over it. The Sage meets her gaze for a moment, then returns to his books at his muttering.
"Hey," says Luci casually. The Sage does respond. "It's good to see you, it's been too long."
Still nothing. The Sage has produced his quill and begun writing on a scroll with his shaking hands.
"I'm really glad I found you," says Luci, a note of desperation in her voice. The Sage pauses, dips his quill in an ink pot, and continues scribbling. "I...I really need your help."
"I am busy," the Sage barks, his raspy voice coming out as a snarl, his eyes on his scroll.
"Please," says Luci. The Sage grumbles, but does not abandon his work. "I think I'm going to die."
With a frustrated sort of growl The Humble Sage lurches form his seat. As he walks around his desk his height diminishes to what it was when Luci first met him painting in her dream. Up close, she can see his eyes have turned yellow and hostile. She watches as the eyes flicker down to her midriff, where her shirt is soaked in blood.
It is not the glittering rainbow blood that Luci often bleeds, but a deep, dark red. She trembles, and the swirling lights that make up her body flicker. She lifts her shirt, showing three deep gashes in her midriff.
The Sage seems surprised, but bitter. He draws a razor sharp letter opener and presses it against his shaking palm, and inky black blood pools into his hand. Unlike the sticky black blood he produced in the Astral Realm previously, this blood has little threads of toxic green squirming inside it. The Sage shakes his head.
"I cannot help you, you've wasted your time. And mine," he adds bitterly, turning his back to her and returning to his work.
Luci collapses in a widening pool of her own blood.
The Humble Sage continues his research. He finds Luci distracting, and a small part of him feels pity for her, but she cannot be helped. His yellow eyes keep flicking over to her though, and eventually he cannot take it.
If he was to get the girl off his mind, he would have to heal her, and to do that, he would have to heal himself.
The Sage cuts another deep gash, this time into his other palm, and begins to meditate. He concentrates on his breathing, then his heart-rate, then his cardiovascular system, seeking out every last drop of Haunter's paralyzing poison, lighting it up with his mind, and then finally pushing it out of his body through the cuts in his hands.
He screams as the green, contaminated blood drips from his hands, burning through his wooden desk like acid, and still he keeps pushing, forcing out every last drop, until
***
The Humble Sage is lying on the sidewalk in Teir-5. He sits up, and recognizes the grey-scale dreamscape that is the Astral Realm. He looks to his right and notices the murals he and Luci and Kazura had painted. He turns to his left, and his heart sinks.
Luci is lying beside him, a thin strand of silver thread running from her forehead to the Sages temple, and three deep bleeding claw marks in her stomach.
The Sage rubs his bleeding palms together, and starts to massage the inky blood into her wounds. Her breathing slows, but the Sage does not stop. She grows cold, but the Sage does not stop. Slowly, agonizingly, the wounds begin to close, and finally heal. Luci's kaleidoscopic eyes flutter open.
***
Luci makes a decision. In half a heartbeat, she takes a deep breath, shakes her spray can, places it against her forehead, and withdraws a thin silvery thread. She then touches the silvery strand to the Sage's temple, and dives deep into his dream-within-a-dream.
***
Luci creeps cautiously through the Sage's subconscious. The quiet, dignified dream-plane manifests as a labyrinth of wood paneled doors and winding staircases, creaking floorboards and flickering candles that never give off enough light and give off no heat at all. The light they do cast has thin spindles of poisonous green running through them, like the toxin in the Sage's veins. Luci mutes her own bioluminescencent glow, so as not to attract any...anything.
Luci keeps her wits about her. She thinks she has a trail; certain candles burn brighter than the others, and when she follows them she sees open doors and misplaced dust. She leaves numbered stickers as she rounds corners, hoping her graffiti doesn't affect the Sage's subconscious too much.
Luci eases open another door, leading to another empty room containing six doors, two of which are on the ceiling. Her frustration builds; this room, like every other in this maze, it is uniform in it's uniqueness. Not a single room in this maze holds the exact same square footage and number and placement of doors, yet each room is made of the same hardwood floors and bare wooden walls, all unfurnished, lit only dimly by candlelight.
Luci takes the door to the left and emerges into a hallway lined with same faded wood paneling as every other hallway. And the end of the hallway is a pair of double doors.
Luci places sticker number eight on the doors, where it glows a pale yellow. She opens the doors as quietly as she can, but they creak loudly in protest. She closes them behind her, and finds herself in a very strange, very large room. Like the rest of the maze, it is lit by candles placed about fifty feet apart from each other, but the candles continue on to the left and right as far as she could see. In front of her, a few hundred feet away, is another door on another wall extending off into the left and the right infinitely.
Luci walks quickly and confidently across the room, her heart pounding in her head. She tries not to look up; although the light from the candles could not possibly reach so high as to illuminate the ceiling of the room, her soft footfalls echo disturbingly, giving her the creeping impression the ceiling is higher than she can imagine. Again, Luci is struck by the sheer scale of the maze, it's very vastness weighing heavily on her at all times like a cosmic presence. She keeps her eyes on the ground until she comes to the set of doors on the other side of the giant room. She is reaching for the handle when she stops, and stands very still.
On the door in front of her is a sticker with a yellow number eight. Three huge claw marks scar the door, slashing through the sticker.
Luci pushes the door open.
She sees an identical giant room, with candles stretching out as far as she could see on either side, and directly ahead of her, across the room, Luci sees herself.
Luci cocks her head to to the left, and sees her double do the same. She turns behind her, and sees herself again, this time craning to look behind her as well,, mirroring Luci's every move. The remnants of the number eight sticker starts to flap in a sudden inexplicable breeze.
Luci sprints to the left, the candles becoming a flickering blur as she raced down the impossibly long tunnel. She starts to feel like the walls are closing in on her, and she is right, the room is narrowing. The candles are indeed crowding her on either side, and the echo of her high-tempo footsteps is becoming flatter as the ceiling gets lower and lower. She sees a door in front of her, perhaps miles ahead. Behind her, the gentle breeze tickles her neck.
The door is closer than it appears, the strange narrowing tunnel giving the illusion it is much farther off. The door itself is very small, maybe a square foot altogether. Luci crouches down and opens it quickly, trying to shove a leg through. The breeze has a slow, steady rhythm to it now, and it reminds Luci of labored breathing. She twists desperately, shape-shifting as small as she can, shimmying her hips through the tiny door, and then her arms, and then her head, and then closing it behind her.
The breeze is gone.
Luci lets her body ease back into it's normal size, watching the door shrink in front of her as she grows. She realizes she is at the entrance to a spiral staircase. There is nothing else in the room, no doors, just the same creaking floors and decaying walls. The staircases has no railing, just step after step lit only by the dim candlelight.
***
How many miles did Luci walk down that staircase? How many hours did she spend, crouched in fear, avoiding the attention of a mild breeze? How many doors did she open, how many corners did she turn, how many hallways did she walk? How many days or years had she spent trapped down here, loosing her what was left of her mind?
***
Luci finds The Humble Sage in a very, very, very large library. She thinks it might seem smaller to him, as he is currently twice Luci's size, but even still, it must be more than anyone could ever read in a hundred lifetimes.
He is sitting at a desk, his face lit by a single candle, pouring over several books at once, and muttering to himself.
"Thrice-damned Sufi Continuationists," he rasps. The candle shakes in his hand as moves it to examine another book, and Luci sees the lines of toxic green creeping up his neck. "They never met a Mazdakist Epicureanist, though, did they? No."
Luci approaches calmly and slowly, giving the Sage plenty of time to see her. She walks up to his desk, and has to place her hands on it and stand on her tippy toes to peer over it. The Sage meets her gaze for a moment, then returns to his books at his muttering.
"Hey," says Luci casually. The Sage does respond. "It's good to see you, it's been too long."
Still nothing. The Sage has produced his quill and begun writing on a scroll with his shaking hands.
"I'm really glad I found you," says Luci, a note of desperation in her voice. The Sage pauses, dips his quill in an ink pot, and continues scribbling. "I...I really need your help."
"I am busy," the Sage barks, his raspy voice coming out as a snarl, his eyes on his scroll.
"Please," says Luci. The Sage grumbles, but does not abandon his work. "I think I'm going to die."
With a frustrated sort of growl The Humble Sage lurches form his seat. As he walks around his desk his height diminishes to what it was when Luci first met him painting in her dream. Up close, she can see his eyes have turned yellow and hostile. She watches as the eyes flicker down to her midriff, where her shirt is soaked in blood.
It is not the glittering rainbow blood that Luci often bleeds, but a deep, dark red. She trembles, and the swirling lights that make up her body flicker. She lifts her shirt, showing three deep gashes in her midriff.
The Sage seems surprised, but bitter. He draws a razor sharp letter opener and presses it against his shaking palm, and inky black blood pools into his hand. Unlike the sticky black blood he produced in the Astral Realm previously, this blood has little threads of toxic green squirming inside it. The Sage shakes his head.
"I cannot help you, you've wasted your time. And mine," he adds bitterly, turning his back to her and returning to his work.
Luci collapses in a widening pool of her own blood.
The Humble Sage continues his research. He finds Luci distracting, and a small part of him feels pity for her, but she cannot be helped. His yellow eyes keep flicking over to her though, and eventually he cannot take it.
If he was to get the girl off his mind, he would have to heal her, and to do that, he would have to heal himself.
The Sage cuts another deep gash, this time into his other palm, and begins to meditate. He concentrates on his breathing, then his heart-rate, then his cardiovascular system, seeking out every last drop of Haunter's paralyzing poison, lighting it up with his mind, and then finally pushing it out of his body through the cuts in his hands.
He screams as the green, contaminated blood drips from his hands, burning through his wooden desk like acid, and still he keeps pushing, forcing out every last drop, until
***
The Humble Sage is lying on the sidewalk in Teir-5. He sits up, and recognizes the grey-scale dreamscape that is the Astral Realm. He looks to his right and notices the murals he and Luci and Kazura had painted. He turns to his left, and his heart sinks.
Luci is lying beside him, a thin strand of silver thread running from her forehead to the Sages temple, and three deep bleeding claw marks in her stomach.
The Sage rubs his bleeding palms together, and starts to massage the inky blood into her wounds. Her breathing slows, but the Sage does not stop. She grows cold, but the Sage does not stop. Slowly, agonizingly, the wounds begin to close, and finally heal. Luci's kaleidoscopic eyes flutter open.
***
![[Image: V4Dvvfy.gif]](https://i.imgur.com/V4Dvvfy.gif)