Conflux, Pt. 5

A typical evening at the Tower, swapping stories and worries at the bar in the lounge.

Featuring @khalacrumbles, @eightswordsparrow, @laznenharuya, @little-purple-thundercloud, @mercermachines, @steelcarbuncle, @ablebuns, and @stormscream.

Conflux, Pt. 6

“Is that…is that your starship?” Stormy asked, her voice giddy as she clapped her hands despite their circumstances.

The Commander nodded with a small smirk.  “Yeah, she can hear us.  That’s good…”

Anafenza tilted her head in confusion at this.  While the Commander tried her communicator again, she turned to Stormy.  “’She’ can hear us?  That sounded like a man on the other side?”

“She meant the ship can hear us.  Ships are always girls.”

“Ships…are always girls.” Anafenza blinked a few times but shrugged.  “I assume this is an Earth thing?”

Stormy shrugged.  “I suppose it is.  Sorry if that’s confusing.”

The Commander groaned in frustration.  “There’s too much interference here, and we can’t get far enough away from the tree to cut through.”

The other two women turned to look.  Sure enough, as the Commander had implied, the cavern was smaller now, an odd gray nothingness taking the place of the stone walls around them.

Stormy snapped her fingers, then beckoned for the badge.  “Gimme.”  The Commander and Anafenza hesitated, not understanding what she meant.  Stormy huffed, beckoning for the device again.  “It’s simple, right?  How do you cut through interference if you can’t build a better transmitter?”

The Commander squinted, her thoughts racing.  “Change the frequency?”  When the other woman simply nodded, as if coaxing her to keep trying, the Commander shrugged and shook her head.  “Um, more power? I don’t –“

Stormy snapped her fingers again and grinned, interrupting.  “More power!” She held the device in her hand, and Anafenza saw threads of electricity start to wrap around her arm, snapping and crackling as the woman manipulated the environment around them.  As she watched, a thick fog began to form above them.

Stormy looked up to the Commander.  “Ready?” When the other woman nodded, Stormy grinned.  “Here we go!” She concentrated a burst of electricity right into the device, then tapped it, eliciting the chirp again.

The Commander practically leapt forward, enthralled by the woman’s powers and forgetting for a moment to speak once the device was activated.  “St. Peter to Rafale!  How do you hear us now?”

There was a curse on the other end of the transmission.  “Prophets! LOUD and clear, Commander, how do you read?”

“Same, Rafale! I’m trapped in a collapsing pocket dimension with two other people, are you able to locate us with the signal from my commbadge and my tricorder?”

“Standby…”  There were more voices in the background now, as more people began to talk over one another.  Anafenza struggled to hear them all, until finally the first man came back onto the channel.  “We’re locked onto the tricorder now, but there is still a large amount of interference. Whatever you labeled it when you scanned it – ‘aether?’ – it’s masking your signal.  Sensors are picking up three faint life signs but they’re all registering as you.”

The Commander shook her head.  “Yeah, it’s a long story, but you’re picking the three of us up just fine.  You can’t transport through the interference?”

“We’re having trouble getting a positive lock…”

Anafenza shrieked then, pointing.  “Jess, look!”

Both women looked up, then to where the auri was pointing.  The Commander gasped.  “Rafale, we have a problem!  The dimension is collapsing faster than before!”

A female voice broke through then.  “I just picked up a massive disturbance in your tricorder readings, Commander!  The link we created here is punching a hole through your dimension and causing it to destabilize at an exponentially faster rate.”

“You can’t get a lock, Nizeri?”

“Negative; M’Ral is coming up with a plan but we can’t make it happen in the next ten seconds. Cut power; use your tricorder to send data bursts.  We’ll send you a message when we have a good idea what to do on our end.  I’m sorry, ma’am!”

The Commander looked at Stormy, then swatted the communicator badge out of her sparking hand.

The grey Nothingness slowed its progress consuming the cavern, and the women all let out the collective breath they’d been holding.  Stormy shook her head.  “Now what?”

Anafenza spoke up instead, certain of the answer.  “We come up with a way to get out of here.”

The Commander nodded. “Boosting the signal definitely helped, but we need a quick solution.  While they work on a way to lock onto us, it would help to make it easier for them.”

“A beacon of some sort,” Stormy said, and the Commander nodded.

Anafenza looked at the other women.  “If the aether is causing the interference, what if we gave your ship a way to better navigate the flow of it to find us?”

“Not just a beacon, but a map?”  The Commander tapped her chin and nodded.  “How would we do that?”

“My linkpearl.” Anafenza brought her hand up to her horn, feeling for the small jewel embedded there.  “It uses the flow of aether to communicate; your ship could use the flow the linkpearl uses to break through the conflicting aether here and find us easier.”

“That just might work,” the Commander said.  “Alright…let’s get to work, ladies.”

Aha. My FFXIV sub ran out and my tire is still flat. ;-;

Colored busts are open!

$40 and I'll draw any character <3

Please just reblog~ I am very very small here and don't have many followers. 💖

Ko-fi.com/smolestberry

🌑 4. Something they love but everyone hates.

Ana taps her chin.  “Something I love…but everyone hates?”  She shifts on the couch.  “Well, I don’t think anyone hates swimming really, and reading is generally fun, right?  Umm…cooking and baking are fun?  I love…hmmm…

“Well, I suppose the one thing I get scolded on the most is the lack of clothing?  I like going skyclad mostly (that’s what Lyta calls it), because it’s just easier to swim that way.  Clothes get too heavy, and it takes too long to get undressed and then redressed and just…yeah…but that would what gets me scolded the most, so I guess that means people hate it?  But not everyone does so maybe that doesn’t answer the question…hmm…hells with it.  Naked.  Final answer.”  She nods, ending the discussion.

((Thanks @little-purple-thundercloud!))

@stormscream is enveloped in a growing darkness… and @steelcarbuncle, @laznenharuya, @thefadingsong, @eightswordsparrow, @little-purple-thundercloud, @mercermachines, and Von Hipper try to figure out what’s going on.

Reblog if you have amazing RP partners.

I do!

@little-purple-thundercloud, @steelcarbuncle!  Looky!

Magus Musings - Reflection

“Wicked white, Angan, not again! I told ye’ already, we don’ ‘ave no berry fruits ye be after!”

Angan tilted head to the side, staring at the hume merchant in confusion. “But I haven’t asked for any berries, Varden. I was just coming for the daily supplies like always, for the Spagyrics. What is this about berries now?” The young drahn woman shook her head, her mop of unkempt black hair falling over her shoulder. This was the third time today on her daily rounds through the Musica Universalis that someone had been exasperated with her for some reason or another.

The hume pointed a fat finger at her. “An’ another thing, how the bleedin’ ‘ells ‘re ye changin’ yer hair so damned fast like? It ain’t natural it ain’t! Ye look a sight better now than ye’ did just a bell ago, tha’s fer sure.  Bleedin’ bright pink as a pixie, as if we didn’ ‘ave enough bright colors ta stare at in the sky! But the answer’s still ‘no,’ so don’ think of addin’ – “

“Berries to the order, no, I got that. Pink hair? Me? Have you been drinking again, Varden? It’s only the eighth bell in the morn!” She took the sack of vials with an annoyed “thank you” and turned to walk away, shaking her head.

All morning, her usual rounds had led to one odd encounter after another. Pink hair. Barely dressed. Smelling of seaweed and “wet” – whatever that smelled like – and always, it seemed, just a bell or two ahead of her.

It was difficult in a town like the Crystarium to be mistaken for someone else. Sure, the occasional dwarf was hard to tell apart, and the zun all looked alike anyway, but there were so few people left in the world to begin with…well…it was difficult to find someone that would look or sound so similar to you that people you’d known for years could mistake you.

“What bloody sinner is going around acting like me,” Angan wondered aloud, making her way to the next stall. She paused, thinking her route again. The imposter was further ahead of her by at least a bell; what if she cut her off at her final stop?  Angan hurried out of the markets to the aetheryte, then down the steps to the Horotorium. It was usually her last stop, so she could go to the library for a new book, and then take the aetheryte back to the Exedra. She hurried down the stairs, her powerful tail swinging behind her.

In the Horotorium, no one seemed to notice anything amiss with her presence, other than noting how oddly *early* she was. “And you’re sure, there hasn’t been another drahn that looks like me down here” she asked the botanists.

“No one except you, Angan. Is something the matter?”

She shook her head, scratching behind her horn a moment in thought. “Thanks anyway,” she replied, turning away. She approached the Cabinet of Curiosity, deciding she could at least get her new book while she was down here, and then return to her daily errands.

The doors of the great library swung open in front of her, and she looked up in time to see –

She blinked.

She saw herself blink back at her. At least, it could have been her, if she had decided to put a flower in her hair and color it bright pink. Or if she had decided to dress as if she were cavorting on a stage in Eulmore.

Angan raised a finger, pointing at the other woman. “You!” She took a threatening step towards…well, herself. “I have been looking all over for -!”

The other woman went wide-eyed, then made a dash for the nearby aetheryte. Her hand reached out and she was gone in a flash, just as Angan managed to hustle to close the gap with her. She cried out in frustration; the woman could be anywhere in the Crystarium now, or even leaving.

But there had been no mistaking that face…those horns…the tail even. Her eyes had been ringed yellow, like Angan’s…the patterns of scales covering her. The woman could have been her twin, had Angan not known better.

“Who the hells do you think you are,” she said to no one in particular. “How did you…wicked white…”

At that moment, Angan thought it may be wise to finish her errands in the markets – the sooner she finished, the sooner she could enjoy a much-needed drink.

1st Sun, 5th AM

Why is it, after all this time, I still hope for peace instead of violence?  That woman said it best, how can i be so naive?

Because I very nearly met the end of a blade, and it wasnt my fault.   I was hoping for peace that day too and it ended with a death.  even With her blood on my hands I know i was not fully to blame

and i know this man was evil i could see it written all over his stupid little face and in his aura   he had no remorse   I know he was sincerely scared of us all but he wasn’t apologetic, not enough to change.  But even despite that, he wasn’t armed.  His goons had fled.  He was no threat.

I fear so often that maybe we’re NOT in the right, not all the time.  How are we any different from that man, from Garlemald, from nemesis, if we’re willing to put a man to the sword with little justice except our own?   why do they think that just because we have such power that we have liberty to exercise it whenever we feel?   I was scared tonight - everyone seemed ready to murder this man.  for what reason??  he loaned money to one of ours and demanded payment back?  and when HE decided payment wasn’t enough, now we execute him?  Uldah has laws for his kind.   it’s not complete anarchy there

I hoped he’d want to live.  he made his choice, and i will not lose sleep tonight over the fact that he was cut down AFTER he tried attacking.  But I fear I will lose sleep knowing I am sleeping so close to people i consider my family because i keep seeing this side of them that is no different than the people i tried to entreat for peace before.

they took control of my mind and had me try to kill Lyta for them.   and I very nearly succeeded.

what will this “family” do to me when i oppose them again?