melodiesoflife | "but things changed once that foul power pervaded the world..."

Entry tags:

"but things changed once that foul power pervaded the world..."

Characters Barkeep, Sparks, Vincent, Rialynn & Midna
Where Desert of Evil.
When Five Years Later...
Summary This isn't where I left my pants...
Warning Will Update

It's hot. Glaringly, stiflingly hot. Although her eyes are closed, Midna winces all the same, pressing her hands into the hot sand all around her to push herself upwards. The strange sensation has her groping the ground again just to make sure... Wait, sand? When had they...

Her red eyes open wide, immediately pressing a hand to her head and realizing that the fused shadow crown she wore was gone. More than that, the hand flew upwards was no longer tiny and sharp. Midna has to take a moment to examine herself, looking down at her body to find— "The curse," she whispers to herself, "but how did..." Gritting her teeth together she struggled to remember the last thing she could. The airship, the exploding crystal stalagmites... Dylas...

As she looks around, there are other bodies strewn about, none she immediately recognizes, however. Are they dead? Launching herself to her feet, she moves to jab the nearest one with her foot, in order to make sure. "Wake up!" she orders, "Did you hear me, I said wake up this instant! This is no time to be lying around in the sun!"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The sun beats down on Mordecai's clothed back, but the sand below him is cool enough that he doesn't want to get up. He remembers lying on the deck of the airship as it sped across the sky, a horrible cracking noise, and the plummeting. He survived, that had to be it. Or he was dying and the cool sand was the the sweet embrace of death.

Or he would have thought so if Midna hasn't kicked him in the side.

"Wh-pfphfht!" He opens his mouth only to have sand fall in. With the energy of someone very much alive and well, he sat up and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. There's sand as well on his mustache and all over the front of his outfit, but none on the long hair on his head, still combed back.

"MUH HORSE!"

Rialynn sat up with a startled mumble, only to stare blankly in front of her for several long moments. Did...did she have a horse? Slowly a deep furrow wrinkled her forehead, the bandanna slanted loosely to one side to hide one of the lowering eyebrows. Her head turned, gazing out across the hot, dark desert. It didn't look familiar.

Then she turned her head in the other direction, just in time to see a demonic woman kicking some man with a moustache.

"Whoa whoa whoa! Hey! Back off!" Clumsily she scrambled over the sand, fumbling for the rapier at her hip as she hunkered protectively near Barkeep. She got the sword out. Dropped it. Frantically picked it back up and pointed it at Midna. "Sir, are you all right?"

Her heart was pounding fast and hard. She'd never faced down a demon before, she was pretty sure, and wasn't exactly thrilled at the inevitable prospect of having her heart ripped out and eaten. But neither could she just stand by and watch her eat this man's heart, as surely she was wont to do.

Not one of the worst experiences waking up Vincent had felt--disorientation was disturbingly familiar to him, given his limit break. But the heat was unexpected, as crimson-eyes opened. Sand, lots of sand and the sun overhead--a desert. Lovely. Getting to his feet, the commotion drawing his attention.

"Rialynn!" There is relief in his voice, that she was alright. He recognized the Barkeep, and the other... The other woman bore a vague, if loose, resemblance to one of the other heroes. Still, it was clear something had happened between them all starting to crash in the airship, and waking up. "Calm down." Attempting to be the voice of reason as he strode closer.

Suddenly, a lump in the sand started to shift. Another moment later and up sat Sparks Nevada, practically exploding out of the dune in a coughing fit. Once the sand was cleared from his lungs, he dug around in the sand until he found his hat, and then shakily stood up, shaking as much from him himself as he could.

He looked around at the desert around him, left, then right, and then at the small group around him.

"...What in blazes just happened?"

"Trouble, that's what--" The sand on his tongue choked him, and he wiped it once more with his sleeve, sitting on the sand in a more comfortable position. It was enough time to realize who he was talking to. "Sparks? You got out?" He looked up at the figure with the rapier. "Rialynn, you too?"

A smile broke out from under the mustache. This was great! Everyone was alive! Probably! They were just farther away from the crash site. He turned to Vincent and nodded. That was one familiar face nearby, the last one...

He squinted at the new woman. Color-wise, she was reminiscent of Midna, but that was no reason to think they were the same person. "...And you are?"

As she turned her head slowly, Midna regarded Rialynn with a lowered gaze, eyeing her clumsy handling of her own sword. What are you gonna do, stab her? She continued to stare down the other woman as though to challenge her, not taking her eyes off of her until the Barkeep addressed her.

It was then that the twili allowed her gaze to skip over all of the others that had awakened, looking them over quickly one by one, before finally answering, confirming Mordecai's suspicion.

"Midna."

"...Midna." She definitely had the hair, though he didn't talk to her enough to recognize the inflection of her tone.

"You can shapeshift or somethin'? Cause I was unaware you could do that for, what, an whole year at least?" He tucked his feet underneath him and pushed himself up. As he brushed the sand off his back, a long lock of hair fell in front of his face. He puffed some air at it, which only let it flop around and fall back.

"Wait a minute." A stand-coated hand gripped the bottom of the strands while the other traced it upwards. It went past his face, above his head, connected to his head. This was his hair, though it had never been this long even when he was a young man.

Mordecai let that sink in, then looked at the others.

"Do I look good?"

Seriously; that is your concern, Barkeep?

Vincent kept most of his attention on Rialynn, while looking over the others. "We need to find shelter from the heat, and water. Once we have those, we can figure out what happened."

Because dehydration would kill them if heat-exhaustion didn't get them first.

There's almost something akin to a chuckle that comes from Midna at that, a pointed— "Hn," before she closes her eyes, and offers any more of an explanation. "It was a curse that resulted in that form I had taken on," forced into the body of an imp, to claw her way back to her former glory. Only, instead...

"Whatever magic that brought us here has lifted that, I suppose." Though the why and how were still lost on her, she studied the palm of her own hand as the barkeep examined himself, and Vincent offered his own concerns.

"You look just wonderful for a day of playing in the sand and further dirtying yourself, which it seems we're in store for," and a glance at the dark-haired man had her nodding. "He's right, we won't survive long in these conditions staying in one place. We... need to move."

Her gaze moved upwards to the sky, trying to discern the best direction to head. Unfortunately, without a map or an idea as to their current location, it was a bit of a crap shoot, either way. "Where this could be however..." she near-muttered to herself in thought.

"You don't think I don't know how to take care of myself in a desert?" He ran the back of his fingers through his hair. Even if it would be coated with sand eventually, he didn't want to rush it by touching it with his dirty palms.

"Reckon it's the desert we were flyin' over before we crashed. Airship should be somewhere nearby. Or what's left of it."

"If yer gonna crash land in a desert, yer with the two guys among the Heroes best to be crash landed in the desert with."

Looking around at the lack of supplies, shelter or transportation, though, Sparks was worried.

"Whatever magic was nice enough to de-cruse ya could've at least been nice enough to leave us at an oasis or somethin'."

"I suppose we were due for some bit of good news, in that case," in regards to the two of them being familiar with the terrain, at least. She supposed they either enjoyed sandboxes a little too much than grown men should, or they at least knew their way around deserts.

"Whatever it is that brought us here can only have been so helpful. The rest is probably up to us," barren wasteland all around, that was all she could see; and after a few moments— a sigh.

"I suppose we should get moving, then. There may be a chance the other heroes are around if we've all crash landed." Though to be so far from the ship that there wasn't a trace of it... that didn't exactly seem promising.

The desert sucked. Not because of any particular reason - Mars was plenty dry and empty and full of trouble on its own. But the ground didn't give way every time he stepped on a pile of course grains, nor did the sun beat down on his back in the same way. Fortunately, the robes protected him from severe sunburn, but the sweating was not a welcome trade-off. Even if they didn't have to defend themselves against monsters, the traveling itself was awful.

Which is why once he saw the Ruins in the distance, Mordecai decided to make it easy and cast Levitate on himself. His feet thanked him. His head did as well, as the wind from gliding over the sand blew away some of the beads of sweat.

"We're almost there!" He sped ahead of the group to be the first to experience the beautiful shade of the ruins. They could finally rest and figure out what to do from there.

Sparks trudged along, wondering how he was still able to march forward. This was exhausting. It also made him really miss his rocket steed, but he was also trying very hard to not think about what might have happened to said rocket steed. He was also having a hard time conjuring up the excitement to see a ruined city, but he was at least thankful for some shade and something to lean against for a moment.

"Yay. A city that gone blown up ages ago. I'm tickled."

As a creature of the shadows, Midna supposed she would never get used to the beating down the sun had a penchant for. Thankfully, her barefeet in the sand were perhaps more forgiving than any shoes the heroes might have been wearing, and so she refrained from levitating, herself.

Looking up and head, her red and yellow eyes narrowed as the ruins came into view. "This place... isn't it—" Roalie?

Vincent kept himself silent--stoic as ever, although he was probably suffering more than most given his mantle, and gauntlet, and the leather he wore. His bandanna had been sacrificed to tie his hair back given it's length, and part of his mantle was ripped even more to make a replacement, as he shaded his eyes. Shade would be a relief, as he had rolled up the sleeve of his right-arm and unbuttoned part of his shirt.

"The question is, how long were were asleep?" It was the first he'd spoken in a while, voice raspier than normal thanks to lack of water.

Once the others caught up, the Barkeep was already claiming the shade of a crumbling wall to be his. He brushed the stray strands of hair away from his face and re-tied a loose braid with the dirty ribbon while watching the ruins. It seemed just like any other ruins - dusty, old, practically timeless. It had been abandoned long enough to cease being a place that could have been lived in - much like Aqures Tosf.

"Judgin' by how long my hair is, likely years." A pause. "Don't much like the thought of losin' out on those years, so I'm goin' with a magical glitch in the system."

With his hood up to shield his head from the sun and his hair out of his face but still out for show, he wrapped the braid around his neck so it hung over the front of his shoulder.

Sparks was feeling pretty scruffy himself, but his hair was nowhere near Barkeep's.

"Too bad we didn't make it back to Aqures Ixen. There might be someone there we could talk to about Barkeep's potential modeling career."

The idea of time passing while they were helpless to do anything really bothered the marshal.

"That only makes me have more questions. Were we just asleep or somethin'? How long's it been? And most importantly, is anyone else starvin'? Where the heck're we gonna find lunch..."

Surveying the area wasn't giving him much hope.

"Well, uh, you get yer own choice of dilapidated building to stay in. One for everyone."

As the two men offered their discourse, Midna opted to trace her hand along one of the long-forgotten walls, that looked more like debris. As though somehow touching it would cause it to yield its secrets somehow... yet there was no such luck.

"There's always the Calamity beasts I'm sure you could dine on, if you aren't too picky," Although her stomach was also empty, she didn't want to admit to it. Looking off into the distance again, there were more buildings up ahead, larger and perhaps, more helpful ones.

As she made her way closer towards the centre of what had once been the city centre, probably, she paused in front of a sign, hammering home the gut feeling she had with a half-submerged ROAL— in ground.

"We're in Roalie," she finally decided to share with the rest of the class, looking grim about it.

The Barkeep gave Sparks a look. Not because he was being a Negative Nancy and ruining the sense of adventure, but also the quick turn of the head got his braid to whip around. He hoped it looked dramatic.

"Yeah, we can do that or we can look for supplies. It's a bit set of ruins, gotta be somethin' hidden 'round here." He already fought Calamity monsters, he didn't want to repeat that again.

"Roalie, huh." That gave them a sense of where in the world they were. "We can head on south or try and find a boat once we leave." He hopped down the slab of rock he was standing on, disabling his levitation spell. "I'm goin' back on the group. Y'all can play lookout."

For whatever they found in the remains of the city, there was something more interesting in the distance, only seen from a high vantage point.

"We should stick together, at least in vocal range of each other." Vincent called, taking a moment to rest in some much needed shade. Water would be their next priority, as would food after that. He was better suited to be a look-out though given his skills.

Aside from the trouble he would have with the heat. Flexing the fingers hidden in the gauntlet and claws of his left-hand to see how badly the sand had affected it so far. Tolerable, but when they found a safe-spot he'd remove it and examine it more.

"Water should be our first priority, and a place to rest from the sun. If we move South, it should be during the cooler parts of pre-dawn and early morning, if we deal with the desert."

"Agreed. But that might mean start diggin'. This is a town destroyed years ago in the middle of the desert. Don't think anyone's gonna have a workin' sink or well in these parts."

Sparks wasn't too hopeful about finding any supplies just lying around that would still be any good, after being left alone in the awful desert climate.

"One of ya didn't think to pack a map by chance, did ya?"

"A map, no. Although I'm confident in my ability to navigate now that we have some idea of where we've landed, exactly." Studying was one of the few things she could be useful with, trapped in the body of an imp and not exactly being the best fighter.

Bending down to grab a stone, Midna began to draw a crude lay of the land in the sand between them all, marking an x in the general direction she knew Roalie to be, and continuing to mark significant places as she continued on, more than ready to make a plan on their next move.

The ruins of a city long forgotten weren't exactly helpful, and she didn't have much help for useful supplies, just as Sparks mentioned.

The Barkeep was dehydrating and having the time of his life. The air was starting to cool down, there were places to explore, a mystery to solve, and oh look.

"I found jam!" He rushed out of the abandoned building he had just waltzed in, waving a red container excitedly. "These things stay good for, like, a lotta year! Trust me, I cook!" Thank the science of homecooking for saving the lot.

Of course, one jar of sweet goo wouldn't sustain the group. He pressed deeper into the city in search of more supplies.

Vincent had stayed quiet and in the shade, only concession to his discomfort being he removed his mantle. When Barkeep came back, excited and then rushed off again, he sighed and got to his feet. Being sure his gun was handy, he removed his right leather glove, and carefully loosened the black shirt he wore. "Midna, would you continue with what map you can make please? We need to watch out for hallucinations as well as monsters."

Crimson-eyes flicked to Sparks. "Do you know how to find traces of water, Marshall?" They would have to dig yes, but water had to be their first priority now that they'd found some form of shelter, inadequate though it was.

Edited 2017-05-04 01:24 (UTC)

"Besides lookin' under our feet? Uh, look for any signs of vegetation, or under rocks. That's about our only options. Might be able to find somethin' around here to collect dew in, but that means waitin' til nightfall to even getting started on it."

Sparks set off towards the houses, to start searching through to see what he could find. "Maybe we'll luck out 'n find a map in here, or at least something to draw one on that ain't sand."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"but things changed once that foul power pervaded the world..."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

At the ruins.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject