Cross Effects > Areas

The Great Northern Forest

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Umbra of Chaos:
Fu Hua

"Hmm~, you're smaller than I expected." The voice didn't come from the figure in the center of the garden. Instead, an identical copy of her pulls itself from the ground and surveys the green haired girl with an almost gleaming focus. A tree behind them shatters into chips of wood and decaying pulp as another Fu Hua emerges from it. This one walks right up to the curiosity and holds the girl's free hand, giving a few thoughtful squeezes.

"With the call you gave, I was suspecting a calamity," says the one in the clearing.

"This isn't quite the same, but I can't say that I'm disappointed," says the one but a few steps away, framing the stranger with her fingers.

"You do have very soft hands for a monster, after all. But there's a good firmness there," says the one holding her hand.

The woods surround the clearing close in on themselves. The branches and roots warp together, trunks bend and do not break, and with a pulse of malice it cuts them off from any direct voyeurs. Though, if that were not enough she could impale any interloper with a thought.

Then the two copies sandwich the green haired girl between them, gently trying to pull her towards the garden as the original holds her hands out. "I, Fu Hua, have come to acknowledge you. I made this garden only for you. Take whatever you want from it." Fu Hua was not so vain that she would pick any common trinket to adorn her. To acknowledge was to desire; to desire was to attain. Even if only to peel apart the mystery, her whimsy had left her with no other choice but to take ownership of this stranger.

"Though," she sighs, "I am not unwilling to answer your questions even if you spurn my gifts."

Who?:
Kore

Kore looks at both of the Fu Hua’s at her side, mind whirling. She had expected a scream of rage, or a silent, murderous advance. Those... subjects she had seen at the highest levels of negative emotion were not rational creatures - powerful, but in a way humans were never meant to be. And they did not look like - they did not hold hands.

Or compliment said hands. Was she blushing? She might be blushing.

She lets herself be pulled towards the garden - where what must be the original stands, surrounded by flowers and fruit, almost sickly in their sweetness. But there is rot underneath.

Rot that she now knows must emanate from Fu Hua - this strange, beautiful evil spirit. Or - perhaps not evil? Negative emotions, powers that shaped the world - she was not in a position to cast judgement on anyone. In this strange new world, she had no frame of reference for who was what. Fu Hua might be some hero who isolated herself away from society in fear of what her unctrolled powers might do to those around her.

But she keeps her parent’s branch in the crook of her arm, and one hand rests on her belt. (The other, out of politeness, remains holding Fu Hua’s hand.)

"I am still much taller than you." She says to the original. She frowns. That was probably the wrong way to start a conversation.
 
And call? What had Fu Hua meant - no, it must be some effect of her weight on the world. Making her presence clear to those around her - like the arched trees. Worrying.

But a concern for later. How to recover from her faux pas?

"I have - food of my own to offer?" She says, but one hand on her belt, the other in the hand of one of the Fu Hua’s all she can do is gesture at the bag she carries with her head. Gift exchanges seemed like they had a certain universal appeal. "And I’ll take some fruit?"

As she speaks, a branch is is suddenly dangling over her. From it hangs an almost too-ripe pomegranate, it’s juices seeping through the skin to drip onto the flowering earth. It look delicious.

Kore lets go of Fu Hua’s hand, reaches up and plucks the fruit from the branch. The juice is sticky on her hands.

It had been  a long time since she had eaten anything she had not grown herself.

It looks sweet.

And when she bites into it, it is.

YOLF:
Longirsu

He looked clinically upon her. His enhanced eyes seemed to hold a searching shine, as though she was not an ancient sorcereress whose frame contained unimaginable adventures and undeterminable power, but rather a repository of knowledge and learning, a fountain of secrets to unveil. The things he could gleam from her history, if she was willing to tell it in detail...

Longirsu held his breath before becoming lost in fanciful ideas.

"And you have never held such desires?" He asked. His fingers drummed on the table, forgetting the elegantly prepared tea, and a sigh underlined his next words. "To be plain, I want to move the axioms of life and death. Perhaps temporal progression, if those are an inadequate approach. And now, space and correspondence, I suppose. To allow individuals that ought have died to resume their lives uninterrupted. And to... return whence I came. To fix things there."

That was not all, but it would have to do. How would Ib have answered? Not the one who served him, but his sister? Longirsu did not care for a world without her regardless; but if she were here, if she willingly shared in his undertakings, she would want him to use the results for the same reason that they set out from their home, all those years ago.

SINIB:
Eruraviel

"Keh!" Eruraviel chuckled, rubbing her sharply angled chin with her softly-calloused fingertips. What scary thoughts he's having about me! I wish that he'd simply covet my body like a normal lechor! This is advanced lechory, far greater than any I've experienced before!

Well, it wasn't as if she was unused to such thoughts, so it'd have been pretty hypocritical to call him out for it. The fact was that they were almost two peas a pod. He'd sprouted out of a need to right the wrongs of his past. An understandable motive, to be sure, and one she'd encountered time and time again. She could see devotion roiling throughout his body, dancing hand-in hand with regret, merging into an unhealthy idolatry of someone-his sister?

Eruraviel shook her head. She couldn't tell yet. Nor did it particularly matter to her whom his devotion was the object of.

"I have similar ambitions myself. For the past five-hundred years, I have been searching for knowledge absolute, the sourcebook of reality. I wish to read it, and claim its contents for my own. I wish to create a new utopia for elvenkind, one which shall stand the test of time that learns from the mistakes of my ancestors."

That way, I'll never have to lose anybody ever again.

Her red eyes gleamed with interest. "In my studies of forbidden artes, I have gained possession of some techniques which allow me a level of control over such simple things as life and death." She snapped her finger, and a busty elven woman with white hair dressed in a maid costume walked through the door. She carried a glass vial filled with a whisping, white liquid—the copy of a soul of a human woman her daughter had harvested earlier in the day. She picked it up off of the pedestal and swirled the priceless object around her fingers, alternating from one side of her hand to the other in a display of inhuman dexterity.

"What do you think, Will? Is he trustworthy?" She cocked her head, staring up into her man's deep purple eyes.

Bern:
William

"Ah....Aha.....Hahahahaaahaaahahha..."

The rumbling laughter did indeed come from the mage of darkness, it buit of deepest of dark depths. It was an ominous warning, but for what only those who dared to gaze into the abyss would know.

"To think... To think that you'd actually.... How amusing....YOU!" He didn't even acknowledge Eru's question, no for his laughter all of it was directed at something else, it was the guest, no that wasn't true either...

It was himself.

He was laughing at himself...

"You're walking down a dark path, the answers awaiting at the end of your journey are not the ones you want... You remind me of someone boy, so young and so foolish, yet so stubbornly determined, too determined. And when it was all said and done, only regret remained. When the time times comes and you finally realize, no I should say no more..."

It was already too late.

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