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Nihilistic Mind

April's trek begins in darkness and for a time, the shifts are simply silhouettes of landscapes against the sky.

Cool winds of night and a shadow-puppet show of sorts once the moonlight appears again.

Columns of smoke in the distance, much like the ones she first witnessed in Cimarron. Machines fallen everywhere. Dead like cattle after a disastrous plague, spread everywhere across the horizon and rolling hills.

The smoke is gone again.

The cool wind is gone and the moon brightens until it becomes a sun. The heat...

Sweat begins to pearl on the tip of April's nose and as she wipes it away, she sees it. A few miles away, stretching from horizon to horizon, across hill and mountains. The Black Road in all of its glory.

The blight upon this land is quite vast, perhaps a quarter mile wide, slightly curved, dark like asphalt. It looks as though it was on fire just a few hours ago, for it still exudes great amount of smoke.

She feels something then. She feels that she is getting closer to her goal, but it also feels as though Eric is moving through Shadow as well.
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TonyLB · Joined: 09 Jun 2008 Posts: 494

April cuts to the left, paralleling the Black Road as it cuts through the mountains. The ground falls away beyond it, and clouds start billowing. She imagines a series of floating islands of stone, with great cities on them, and when she turns a bend they are there ... but they are burning, the bridges between them broken in places, home to raging battles in others.

"Typical," she mutters unhappily. She angles closer to the road, just brushing the turbulent edges where it cuts shadows apart, trying to pick up speed, get ahead of Eric, get in the way of his path. She keeps her eyes out for an obstacle, expecting the Road to reach out and try to swallow her, soon.

Nihilistic Mind · Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 5:00 am Post subject:

The horizon is asunder, rivelets of fire cutting the fields and mountains April travels through. Hurdles for her to jump until...
The heat.

Stabilizing the land, the Road here is a massive, solid sheet of obsidian. An army of demonic things travel it, two thousand perhaps... Three. A flock of feathered serpents detaches and begin flying in her direction.

Rainy clouds on the horizon... Rain... Flash floods. Too far away to affect her trek. Towers too tall to be affected. The Black Road unnaturally reroutes the flood against her. Someone is working on this... She felt the change.

A desolate landscape, flat and rusty. Large insects are crawling about, coming after her. Piles of scarabs are crushed and emit awful odors, especially closer to the Road at her right.
Somewhere over her shoulder, the feathered serpents follow through quickly disappearing rainy clouds, miles behind. The Black Road here is a huge fissure in the ground. From a mile away, April can see titanesque slithering tendrils searching about, moving through sky and flattening the land with slow precision. Avoiding the Road's massive attack might give the feathered serpents an edge.
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TonyLB · Joined: 09 Jun 2008 Posts: 494

April climbs up, the water rushing down and around to encircle the rocks she clambers onto. From a high precipice she dives, slamming through the surface of the churning water like a shot crossbow bolt. She turns and torques, catching the rushing currents with her body, picking up speed. A bob to the surface and -subtract-, feathered serpents falling behind her, and down below into the gritty swirling water. A bob to the surface and shift, and under. Tendrils whisk by her, but she keeps up speed, keeps shifting the world about her. She feels the Road tugging against her ... the water stops churning, starts building into a maelstrom. With swift, powerful strokes she swims clear, clambers onto spongey rock and looks about, seeking out a path, feeling her way toward a rendezvous with Eric.

Nihilistic Mind · Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2009 12:22 am Post subject:

She feels that she is getting closer... After the changes she made, she sees elements appear that are staying. For one, the stone strewn landscape, with rocks of varying sizes. And just now, a new element that feels right: a tower of white stone, a bright beacon on the far horizon.

Additionally, her current landscape includes diseased vegetation and green clouds of warm vapor that shoot upwards seemingly randomly. These elements are new and insignificant to the place she is looking for: the meeting with Eric.

The land is mostly flat here and she can see the flash floods have gone, leaving their mark into the earth. The three feathered serpents left are a half mile behind her and beating their wings dry, giving her enough of a head start to begin changing things anew.

The Black Road here is a flowing river of dark sand and nothing appears to be traveling upon it, although the surface shifts like waves here and there, suggesting things are moving under the surface.
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TonyLB · Joined: 09 Jun 2008 Posts: 494

As she runs along, April eyes the ground, recently disturbed and turned by the flash floods. One after another she finds large, flat stones, about the size of her chest. Soon she is running with two under each arm, the extra weight and bulk making her pant. Her clothes, drying from the flood, turn gritty and clinging again as sweat pours off of her body.

The Road reaches out again, a shifting torrent of sand suddenly there between her and the white tower before her. She spins on her heel, throwing each stone discus, one two three four. As the first one arches up, under the remaining three (each on a higher and longer trajectory) she leaps forward, feeling lighter again, arching her back for long jump distance over the black sand. The first stone smacks with a flat "plop" that sends sand cascading out in waves, and her foot lands on it, bobbling and unsteady, a moment later ... she sinks into a crouch in a bare steadying moment, as the sand shifts with disturbing submerged shapes around her. Then she leaps again, for the next stone, as the first one sinks. One, two, three, four she gains long springing distances with the momentary flotation of each flat stone, and then makes a final leap for the far side.

Nihilistic Mind · Posted: Tue Apr 07, 2009 3:45 am Post subject:

The heavy panting and breathing causes the vapors that shoot up to itch her throat, and as she jumps her final leap across the swaying Black Road, she lands on uneven ground, barely catching her balance. Did her ankle twist? It was a hard impact, but no.

Somewhere behind her, the feathered serpents have begun their flight anew, but April as earned even more distance, for they fly high above the green stench of the surface.

The four discs have sunk and in their place, a strange writhing of white mass -looking like large fish eggs- taking their place, growing in quick spurts and coming after April. They touch the ground and quickly form into vague anthropoid shapes, sans heads. They begin running after her.
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TonyLB · Joined: 09 Jun 2008 Posts: 494

April runs toward an outcropping of rocks, a few scraggly trees sprouting in the limited shade. Her pace is easy ... enough to stay slightly ahead of her pursuers, but not so much as to add more strain to her aching ankle. When she reaches the plants, she wraps her hands around a young tree, perhaps ten feet in length. She bends and heaves it, root-ball and all, out of the parched soil. Thus armed, she turns back to the approaching amorphous blobs of eggs.

"Yeah ... I really hate things without enough internal organs to know when to lay down and die," she mutters, and swings the tree through the masses, viciously back and forth, trying to disperse them far enough (and away from her) that she can get a real lead on them while they reform. She backs away as she does it, confident that they'll follow her, and quite uninterested in having a few stray eggs end up falling anywhere near her.

Nihilistic Mind · Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2009 9:50 am Post subject:

The things bend unnaturally, just as she expected, avoiding the blows as best as they can, losing limbs here and there.
The first swings are used to force them to move against each other. Then come the disabling blows, smashing would-be heads and breaking down torsos and legs and arms. Alas, before she can fully dispatch them, several strands composed of white balls roll down purposefully, sticking to the bark enough not to be swung away, moving dangerously toward her gloved hands.

Two of the things are only half deformed and can continue following her. She could dispatch them but that would allow the newly formed - and smaller - strands to descend upon her more fully, and possibly grasp her hands.
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TonyLB · Joined: 09 Jun 2008 Posts: 494

April tosses the tree sideways across the two that remain standing, and breaks into a run, shifting toward the tower in the distance.

Nihilistic Mind · Posted: Mon Apr 13, 2009 1:59 am Post subject:

Shifting helps. She is faster than these things, whatever they are. They don't seem to be adapting to her changes very well at all... Perhaps a matter of proximity from the Road.

The feathered serpents though have been flying and using the newly found wind currents. She can see the shadows silhouetted in front of her as the sun shifts above her.

In the distance, the tower changes as well, but a tower it remains.

The landscape flattens and the rock formations shift on their own. They are moving. A natural phenomenon of Shadow, as far as she can tell, rather than the foreign influence of the Black Road, distant at her back.
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TonyLB · Joined: 09 Jun 2008 Posts: 494

April runs and dodges amidst the shifting rocks. Each rock that swings by, blotting out the sky, is an opportunity for her to tweak the scenery on the far side. With her objective close at hand, and the black road passed, she concentrates on the serpents that keep pursuing her, seeing whether they are something caught up in her slipstream that she can subtract, or whether they are pursuing her on their own (or borrowed) power.

Nihilistic Mind · Posted: Wed Apr 15, 2009 4:36 am Post subject:

The feathered serpents continue to follow her, crossing through Shadow with enough ease, following her through the changes. Even now, away from the Road, she can feel its presence at work, though it is somehow diminished as she gets closer to the tower.

The Tower become this large, light sandstone structure, cylindrical and about three hundred feet high. There seems to be no opening of any kind, though perhaps there are thin slots here and there, since April can hear the tower whistle in the powerful high winds.

The rocks here are moving in a strange pattern. Rocks follow the orbit of other rocks, affected in a seemingly random fashion, they actually collide and change each other's course as if planets around the same central point: the Tower.
Some rocks are massive and loom over April while others are climbable or even boulder-sized.

The sounds here are hardly soothing. She can hear the whistling tower, the grinding of living stone against stone, and at last, she hears the cries of the four feathered serpents as they begin their descent toward April.

If only she had the time to study the pattern the rocks create, she could completely anticipate their movement, but making her way to the Tower - the obvious interception point - will require a bit of a careless path amid the sliding giants that surround her.

She still has a long mile to go. The feathered serpents will reach her in a matter of moments...
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TonyLB · Joined: 09 Jun 2008 Posts: 494

April runs past a sliding, creaking stone, then doubles back in the passing cover it provides, to leap forward at the pursuing serpents. She reaches out, trying to grasp the nearest one behind the jaws, and swing its body around disruptively to buy a moment's time while she evaluates her attackers.

Nihilistic Mind · Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2009 7:45 pm Post subject:

The large feathered serpent - about 30 feet in length and roughly a foot and a half in diameter - peers behind the rock, its fangs bared, its mane of feathers ruffled.

April is much too quick though, and easily hangs from its jaw after leaping. Trouble is, the thing is tumbling down with her, twisting its body on itself to trap her. April feels the creature's powerful strength working against hers and she can tell that on its own, it will eventually be vanquished... But there are three more, and the dangerously fast rocks and the awkward paths they form. April can wrestle the thing, or slide away from it if she chooses.

The lands here are quite desolate and there is nothing else but the Tower, the sliding rocks and boulders, April and the feathered serpents. There is no one to help, and no one to hinder her.
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