Cross Effects > Areas

The Great Northern Forest

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Bern:
William

The introduction of this scientist came to mind, and with that in mind it was all to easy for his old mind to wander to darker places. He was being far too guarded for his liking, speaking pleasantries yet taking so long to even convey why he was truly here. He could think of a few things that would require That and none of them were good.

"And what kind of weapon requires you to gather several unending energy sources?" It was a shot in the dark, but he had a feeling his coming here had something to do with that or at least something close to it. The carefulness in this man's words as well as his introduction gave it away.

YOLF:
Longirsu

His attention fell easily on the sigils she called upon, adding them to the threads of information that his eyes began to dissassemble. But his expression curled with dim displeasure to the man's question. He was sharp, and not to be underlooked. It pulled at something ugly inside that this was the kind of inquiry that Longirsu himself would have posed, in his place.

He was not naive. He did not expect this elf sorceress to tell him everything she had ever planned, or the dreams that she wove in the loom of her power, and he had no intentions to tip his entire hand. Weapons? Yes, after a certain fashion, that wasn't wrong. What would this William think if he knew of the artifacts he kept? Too soon for that. He did not relish revealing any weakness, yet Longirsu sensed that neither could he get away with a bold lie. Not underneath Eruraviel's gaze. Not yet.

"They are useful for that," Longirsu said, and lowered the teacup back to its place with a faint clack. "But it is the means to manipulate physical laws which I care for. There are... errors I must correct. I want to find the method to restore something that has been indelibly broken, and I believe in such power sources lies the key."

SINIB:
Eruraviel

"Oh, how interesting." Eruraviel immediately interjected without missing a single second. "You wish to gain the power to manipulate physical laws? Pray tell, which ones?" Eru raised a blond eyebrow and cocked her head a few degrees to the left. "I have met many such adventurers with such goals in the few centuries I've been alive—very few of whom which I'd classify as beneficial to my health. Some wanted power, some desired the power to recreate the universe from scratch in the form of a 'better' world out of a sense of idealism. Some others wished to kill gods—and a few, well, they simply wished to have the ability for the sake of sating their own mystical curiosities." She had been forced to risk her life many times, and oftentimes her ephemeral friends had been forced to take the ultimate sacrifice themselves. Her, well, she'd bound herself to the material plane, so she hadn't been whisked away to the afterlife like the rest. However...

She knew. She was fully aware of what sorts of catastrophes might be unleashed were she to blindly aid him in his quest. And she was wary. Eruraviel seemed to have finished playing with her magic, tapping on what appeared to be a button before swiping right with her hand, dispelling the interface.

She looked carefully into his eyes, into his soul. "So, I shall ask you again. What are your goals? What sorts of errors are you seeking to correct? How would my aiding you result in me helping myself?"

Umbra of Chaos:
Fu Hua

The forest rots. Corruption pours through it, infecting the life within. Maggots spill from the earth. They fester in the ground her feet trample on, as if they were feasting on the dead soil itself. Ancient trees groan in agony as their trunks splinter. Blood red sap drips from them as their leaves visibly age and fall. Fu Hua's face twists into a slight frown, but neither her putrid surroundings or her expression mar her loveliness.

No, even that is insufficient. Surrounded in decay, she appears even more beautiful.

But she is frowning nevertheless. She clicks her tongue in irritation, and she gestures towards the death around her in mild distaste. Honestly, was it any surprise that she preferred the city? This was not so bad, but it was hard to have pleasant company like this. These old places always seem to have it out for her, forcing only the most brutish acts! Well, again, she didn't really dislike that. But it just wasn't convenient all the time. She was looking for someone after all. It'd been so long since anyone had put out such a loud and broad call.

So she gently shepherds her target towards her. Fu Hua's will shapes the forest, sculpting dense woodlands to guide the strange girl to her. All to bring the girl to the clearing she had forcible emptied and forced to bloom, a cornucopia of flowers and fruit feeding on and concealing the devastation.

Who?:
Kore

As she... strolls? No, rambles, she’s rambling along.

As Kore rambles through the forest, she pauses every so often. She stares at trees she only faintly remembers from her time on Earth. She starts when she hears the twitter of bird song - and stares up as... she doesn’t know what this one is called, if it was native to her Earth. But there are living things here. Living things.

Kore leans against a tree and sighs, tension coiling through her body, pulling taut like steel wire.

Living things. 

She breathes slowly and deeply, regular breaths.

Living things.

She swallows the slightly manic laughter that starts to crawl up her throat. She doesn’t know why she’s here, or where she is. But here, surrounded by life she has not had to raise by hand, she feels content in a way she has not in a long, long time. It is a verdant land, full of life (and death, she thinks to herself wryly, smelling the scent of decay and death in the distance) and she is in it.

As she straightens up and starts walking forward again, even the  root she nearly trips on can’t dampen her mood.

Kore walks forward with more focus now, her steps filled with purpose.

She only stops when she sees...Rotted trees.  Great redwoods, with decaying cores, gnawing at dead soil. There not a clear demarcation, but interspersed with still healthy, living trees - it’s odd, to her mind. Some odd illness, an element in the soil? She can see more dead trees beyond them, a forest of wooden corpses held up solely by inertia. The scent of rot is thick in the air, and after years of smelling only the sterile, lifeless air of her home, even this is somewhat welcome.

If disgusting.

But her curiosity has been piqued - a vice, admittedly, but harmless compared to everything else she’s done. The corruption, rot... It affects everything. And some of the flowers - oozing sickly sweet nectar, bloom as she passes.

The most confusing thing is that nothing is actually breaking - with this many rotten trees, at least some should have broken, especially with such advanced stages -  they must have been like this for weeks at least, and been blown down or just crumbled, dry, rotten roots unable to hold their ground.

But if this is a new world, who knows what could be happening? Ores, water, illnesses she has never seen before - she lets herself indulge in a brief fantasy of helping people here heal, if people exist, of fighting strange illnesses - but discards it. If  the people hadn’t figured out how to fight this, there was no guarantee she -  a foreigner from another world, and one with no talent for medicine would. Her plants had never had to deal with illness. There was nothing left to cause it.

Trees fall, out of nowhere as she steps forward. She looks up with narrowed eyes as they collide so they lean over her together, forming an arch. In front of her, more and more trees do the same, and the effect is something like the crossed spears of soldiers, showing respect to a visiting dignitary to a royal court.

And at the end of the pseudo-corridor formed by the leaning trees, she sees a clearing of flowers and fruit, and in the middle - a short, lithe figure. Even from this distance, she can see training in their shape, in the way they hold themselves.

Even from here, she can sense what they are - more an evil spirit than a person, formed from corruption and negative emotions.

She thinks, for a moment, of a very long time ago, when she gave mortals parts of her power, to make themselves into monsters, forms twisting as they were armoured with their hatreds and sorrows.

They pale to this, whatever it is.  It is like a dragon to a carp.

Kore rests her hand on the belt that now wraps her waist - sleek and angular, petrified wood that is not wood cold under her fingers.

She has many questions to ask this being. They want to tear out of her mouth. But she masters herself and says:

"What are you, and what do you intend?"

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