04-24-2017, 11:59 PM
Peddling hard, powerful legs pumping, the traveler wove his way through the Nexus, his quarterstaff psychokinetically in tow. There was a slight chill as his sodden hair and clothing dried, raising goosebumps on his bare arms.
As he rode, giving other people a wide berth and taking extra-special care to avoid the Fountain of Infinity by at least half-a-kilometer, he focused on the upcoming task, and tried to recall everything he could about operating in the jungle.
Camoflage was a must. He'd put on some more fitting clothes before entering the 'verse. Provided this all ended in violence - and if Regal's narrative was even remotely accurate then it probably would - then see-and-don't-be-seen was going to be just as important, if not more so, than kill-or-be-killed. He'd want to stick to the treetops, if possible, and be on the lookout for dead-falls, trip-wires, and other easily-concealable traps. Most jungle-predators - and that included guerrilla fighters - liked to ambush from the trees, but preferred earthbound prey.
They're unlikely to be expecting somebody who knows what he's doing - from what I've gathered, most primes just kind of make it up as they go along.
Here's hoping I actually DO know what I'm doing...
Eventually, the gate to the Green came into view, a distant verdant arch with shades of bark visible between the vines. Kelly had nearly reached it, could actually smell the clean, forest-scent of chlorophyl, soil and fresh oxygen streaming from the gate, when he was abruptly overcome by a sudden wave of vertigo.
The traveler skidded to a stop and dismounted, dropping the bike with an unceremonious crash, and barely made it two lurching steps before collapsing to his knees. His telekinetic grip on his weapon was lost, and the staff bounced and clattered on the featureless white floor.
What...?
This was different than when his psychic powers had reawakened, or when his Haunt had returned. There was a buzzing in Kelly's head, a rumble and a pressure and a roar, and it was growing. It felt like a machine had switched on inside his mind, and the parts were kicking on, one after the other, doing their best to shake everything around them to pieces in the process. His vision went dark for a moment.
Then, with all the terrible majesty of a sledgehammer hitting a television, he could see. Infrared and ultraviolet, magnetic fields, gravity, and radio-waves, it all folded and unfolded, weaving a perfect picture in impossible colors, feelings and flavors and sounds, a synaesthetic smorgasboard of sublime complexity that combined to create a flawless real-time map of everything around him.
The metaphorical fog that shrouded his memory started to roil. It was reacting to this new development, thinning, withdrawing in the face of a major contextual clue as the light of dormant senses which had defined much of his former life dawned once again. He was assaulted by random sights and sounds and smells, debris of the past clamoring for release. All together, the experience was overwhelming: reawakened at last to higher realms of perception, the psychic's brain practically sang.
One minute ticked past, then another. The intensity died down as the traveler's powerful neural architecture compensated for the new feedback, some pre-existing structure within his haunt intervening to take the brunt of the strain.
Kelly sat up, brushing a cascade of damp brown hair out of his eyes - his ponytail had somehow come undone - and blinking hard. His normal, human-standard eyeballs still worked - but comparing his deep-set baby-blues to his newly potent sensorium was like matching a jet-aircraft against a hang-glider. On a certain level, it was the same thing, but one was so superior that the other almost didn't seem to have a point. The only advantage his eyes had was that they could show him things that lay beyond his higher senses' limited range; outside his purely mundane vision, things got fuzzy past about fifteen meters, and incoherent past twenty, but extrasensory nearsightedness was only a minor drawback.
He now had a 360-degree absolute perceptual territory. The value of that couldn't be overstated.
Of course, there wasn't much to see in the nexus, no matter what he was looking with. There was some radio noise bouncing around -communication between 'verses and Primes. His staff was over there, and his bike was over there; Both were surrounded by weak magnetic force-lines. He was also acutely aware of his wristcom, and of the liberator aide on the opposite arm, both putting out a variety of low-key electronic noise.
The ground beneath him was almost invisible, blank in any spectrum.
It's probably a good thing this didn't happen after I went through the gate. I don't even want to think about how much worse it might have been if I'd been somewhere with actual stuff.
Kelly rose cautiously to his full height, still slightly unsteady, and retrieved his staff without looking at it, telekinetically calling the iron-shod weapon to his calloused hand. He also levitated the bicycle, deploying its kickstand and leaving it beside the gate.
The traveler took a deep breath, then another, facing the shimmering surface of the portal contained within the gate and trying not to be awed by the flavor of its spectra. His mind was still sparking, but as disruptive as this experience had been, it didn't change his immediate goals - and seeing as how those goals probably involved penetrating a jungle stronghold, that meant he needed a new set of clothes.
The rainbow glare of Omnilium lit the Nexus. Ten minutes of careful summoning later, the psychic was dressed in a digital camouflage version of his usual outfit, hard-to-resolve pixelated patterns covering his jeans and tee in shades of brown, purple and green, with stripes of black grease-paint on his arms and criss-crossing his face. Feeling as prepared as we was likely to get, and vaguely annoyed that he couldn't do better, Kelly broached the gate to the Tangled Green.
As he rode, giving other people a wide berth and taking extra-special care to avoid the Fountain of Infinity by at least half-a-kilometer, he focused on the upcoming task, and tried to recall everything he could about operating in the jungle.
Camoflage was a must. He'd put on some more fitting clothes before entering the 'verse. Provided this all ended in violence - and if Regal's narrative was even remotely accurate then it probably would - then see-and-don't-be-seen was going to be just as important, if not more so, than kill-or-be-killed. He'd want to stick to the treetops, if possible, and be on the lookout for dead-falls, trip-wires, and other easily-concealable traps. Most jungle-predators - and that included guerrilla fighters - liked to ambush from the trees, but preferred earthbound prey.
They're unlikely to be expecting somebody who knows what he's doing - from what I've gathered, most primes just kind of make it up as they go along.
Here's hoping I actually DO know what I'm doing...
Eventually, the gate to the Green came into view, a distant verdant arch with shades of bark visible between the vines. Kelly had nearly reached it, could actually smell the clean, forest-scent of chlorophyl, soil and fresh oxygen streaming from the gate, when he was abruptly overcome by a sudden wave of vertigo.
The traveler skidded to a stop and dismounted, dropping the bike with an unceremonious crash, and barely made it two lurching steps before collapsing to his knees. His telekinetic grip on his weapon was lost, and the staff bounced and clattered on the featureless white floor.
What...?
This was different than when his psychic powers had reawakened, or when his Haunt had returned. There was a buzzing in Kelly's head, a rumble and a pressure and a roar, and it was growing. It felt like a machine had switched on inside his mind, and the parts were kicking on, one after the other, doing their best to shake everything around them to pieces in the process. His vision went dark for a moment.
Then, with all the terrible majesty of a sledgehammer hitting a television, he could see. Infrared and ultraviolet, magnetic fields, gravity, and radio-waves, it all folded and unfolded, weaving a perfect picture in impossible colors, feelings and flavors and sounds, a synaesthetic smorgasboard of sublime complexity that combined to create a flawless real-time map of everything around him.
The metaphorical fog that shrouded his memory started to roil. It was reacting to this new development, thinning, withdrawing in the face of a major contextual clue as the light of dormant senses which had defined much of his former life dawned once again. He was assaulted by random sights and sounds and smells, debris of the past clamoring for release. All together, the experience was overwhelming: reawakened at last to higher realms of perception, the psychic's brain practically sang.
One minute ticked past, then another. The intensity died down as the traveler's powerful neural architecture compensated for the new feedback, some pre-existing structure within his haunt intervening to take the brunt of the strain.
Kelly sat up, brushing a cascade of damp brown hair out of his eyes - his ponytail had somehow come undone - and blinking hard. His normal, human-standard eyeballs still worked - but comparing his deep-set baby-blues to his newly potent sensorium was like matching a jet-aircraft against a hang-glider. On a certain level, it was the same thing, but one was so superior that the other almost didn't seem to have a point. The only advantage his eyes had was that they could show him things that lay beyond his higher senses' limited range; outside his purely mundane vision, things got fuzzy past about fifteen meters, and incoherent past twenty, but extrasensory nearsightedness was only a minor drawback.
He now had a 360-degree absolute perceptual territory. The value of that couldn't be overstated.
Of course, there wasn't much to see in the nexus, no matter what he was looking with. There was some radio noise bouncing around -communication between 'verses and Primes. His staff was over there, and his bike was over there; Both were surrounded by weak magnetic force-lines. He was also acutely aware of his wristcom, and of the liberator aide on the opposite arm, both putting out a variety of low-key electronic noise.
The ground beneath him was almost invisible, blank in any spectrum.
It's probably a good thing this didn't happen after I went through the gate. I don't even want to think about how much worse it might have been if I'd been somewhere with actual stuff.
Kelly rose cautiously to his full height, still slightly unsteady, and retrieved his staff without looking at it, telekinetically calling the iron-shod weapon to his calloused hand. He also levitated the bicycle, deploying its kickstand and leaving it beside the gate.
The traveler took a deep breath, then another, facing the shimmering surface of the portal contained within the gate and trying not to be awed by the flavor of its spectra. His mind was still sparking, but as disruptive as this experience had been, it didn't change his immediate goals - and seeing as how those goals probably involved penetrating a jungle stronghold, that meant he needed a new set of clothes.
The rainbow glare of Omnilium lit the Nexus. Ten minutes of careful summoning later, the psychic was dressed in a digital camouflage version of his usual outfit, hard-to-resolve pixelated patterns covering his jeans and tee in shades of brown, purple and green, with stripes of black grease-paint on his arms and criss-crossing his face. Feeling as prepared as we was likely to get, and vaguely annoyed that he couldn't do better, Kelly broached the gate to the Tangled Green.
Quote:Kelly has reached the Tangled Green! Let the games begin!