ic Puzzle Box: A Grave Matter

[Exaccus]

"One step at a time pixie, it'll unfold as we go and we'll figure it out one bit at a time, like a puzzle." He reassured her in romanian, it was a beautiful language he felt, his neighbour, an old lady from targoviste had taught him as he did odd jobs around the neighbourhood.

 

"Oh yeah." He said suddenly switching to english "pixie aint much into fighting, if stuff turns rough she'll vanish till it calms down, so dont freak out yeah? Shes the brains im the brute force and blind ignorance."

Edited August 15, 2018 by Exaccus

[Supercape]

GM

 

The Gravedigger gave a broad toothy grin. "An we shall see if that be so" he answered, voice rumbling and deep. 

 

And so, we see...

 

More trees and stones past. Many more. If felt like time here was stretched, hypnotic, or maybe didn't exist at all. It was not an entirely unpleasant state, but neither could it be called pleasant. Every now and again, a skeletal hand popped from the earth, or a rotting corpsed lurched out of the moonlight. They were easy enough tpo run away from, punch, or...in the case of the Gravedigger, chop head off. 

 

"I'm tired. I'm, bored. And that nasty old skull says we are only halfway there..." moaned Pixie. 

 

It was hard to say how long they had been trudging under the moonlight - and the moon had not shifted, although it had surely been hours. 

 

They were by a mirror still lake now, and apparently they had to cross. Pixie, however, said she needed to wait as her feet hurt. 

 

"More 'n ya feet be hurtin by the time we finished" muttered the Gravedigger. It was not a threat, but it was grim. 

 

"Oh you are soooo grumpy" muttered Pixie back. In Romanian, just to be sure...

 

"How are you doing, Captain Copy?" asked Pixie, much more cheerfully, to Fascimile. 

[Exaccus]

"haha, im fine thanks penny." he said with good humour "hmm...though maybe i should go by copy captain?" he asks with a rub of his chin before snapping back to the here and now "Folks used to take me hiking out in Georgia when they were visiting my Ma's parents." he explained, sweeping his hand out infront of him as if he were laying the scene out like a table cloth.

 

"Beautiful twilight in the hills ya know? Red, Orange, Pink and yellow sunset in the sky, fireflies everywhere, frogs and crickets having their battle of the bands." he sighed "good times all round, big tasty barbeque waiting back home."

 

"Not like this place at all....its so...quiet, makes me a little sad." he said on a rather more glum note before perking back up again "oh hey, it'll take us forever to walk around this lake...i could make us a bridge and go straight over it." he offered evenly "give you a lift if ya still sore."

 

he then turned his attention to the skull "what about this guy, he got a name or what? cause i was gonna call him bitey." a little off topic but hopefully more of a lightening subject for conversation.

 

"Bet he knows all kindsa stuff about that black magic stuff, like how to stop or destroy it, no point in making something like that if you can't turn it off when it gets attitude right?"

[Supercape]

GM

 

"Bitey! Ha, I like it!"

 

Evem the Gravedigger seemed to approve, silently, of the name.

 

Pixie talked Latin some more with Bitey. The conversation was not warm, but it was less chilled than before. And at least Bitey was not wailing in torment as previously. The rotting head still looked both disgusting and insane, however. 

 

Pixie finished up talking to Bitey and relayed the conversation, in Romanian, to Fascimile. 

 

"He says he is Octavio Rumus, sage and scholar. Or something like that. Sounded a bit like sorcerer if you ask me. Said he had made...errr....spells or wards or something so he would not...err...die when he died. Sorry, Latin isn't really cut out for these concepts" she blustered. "Or maybe I just don't translate so well. Anyway, it seems this violin player, Mr. Ludwig Necromme, reanimated him and tricked him into revealing his secrets" she explained. "He isn't exactly happy with this Ludwig, I can tell you that much..."

 

"Enough talking! You speak English now, ya hear! No with the secrets!" demanded the Gravedigger, wagging his finger and gripping his Machete. 

 

"What did em skull say? And how we getting across de lake? I 'ope you swim good!" he cackled. 

[Exaccus]

"eh he's mostly swearing" facs said dismissively "His names Octavio, im calling him bitey, witchman plays the violin goes by ludwig, Bitey has made several suggestions for what to do to ludwig for reanimating him and has made a few requests regarding ya machette, i shaln't repeat.." he added humouredly.

 

"keep threatening Pixie and ill oblige him on a few though." he added with a harder edge to his voice "As for the lake, leave that to captain copy." giving a short whimsical salute as he touched the soil beneath him and flesh transformed to dense loamy earth "I will make us a bridge, might get ya shoes dirty mind."

 

Raising the lakebed was an easy enough task in this state, he was a part of the earth and willing it to move, harden or soften was as simple as controling his own arms, flexing sod like sinews and compacting it into as solid a surface as he could manage "gonna have to put it back when we get to the other side but for now, keep an eye out for crumbling.round the edges, no lake is ever as placid as it looks."

 

 

[Supercape]

GM

 

"I'm not threatnin' da girl" smiled the Gravedigger threateningly. "Ya know when I'm threatnin'"

 

The bridge of earth looked impressive, however, and the Gravedigger was thusly impressed. "A bridge! Ver' 'Andy!" he nodded, picking up Bitey in his basket, who once again wailed in misery. 

 

"'After you!" he indicated with his machete. 

 

The lake was crystal clear and shimmered in blue moonlight. Hardly a ripple crossed its surface, and when it did, Fascimile thought he could see skeletal fish swimming in its depths. 

 

A chill swept through the air halfway across the lake, and the moonlight somehow became clearer. From the ether, the moonlight condensed and formed the image of a woman in the garn of the early thwentieth century. Not corpreal, not alive. 

 

Somewhat like a ghost, one might say. 

 

"Who crosses!" she whispered, barely audible. 

[Exaccus]

After a half second of not-really-thinking Alex answered the apparition with sparkling intelligence on full display

 

 "Me." much to his credit however he realized how inane his answer was immediately after speaking  but lent into it  without a a second thought, maybe it was because his head was made of litteral mud but he he felt an inclination to be simple and direct in his words, thoughts and deeds

 

"These are my aquaintances" he continued, gesturing to the assortment behind him.

 

"Who are you and why do you care?"

[Supercape]

GM

 

"I do not know...the past is misty and obscure" said the ghost in a lilt, quite unsure of herself. Her speech was well elocuted, almost poetic, almost a song. 

 

"I remember music and laughter, then tears and lamentations. I remember a man who played the violin as if God himself was dancing on the strings" she continued. "But these are echoes of who I once was. And this echo now floats on a lake of calm sorrow" she said, sad but without despair. 

 

"We are locked in a box, where the dead do not die, and the living barely live. Beautiful as it can be, it should end..."

 

She turned once again to Fascimile. "...what brings you to this half-place, and what are your intentions?" she asked. 

[Exaccus]

"ah... I see you've had a run in with luddwig." he commented as he rubbed his chin, sprinkling the dirt path with his crumbling and yet reforming visage.

 

"We're looking for him too, he's been a bit of a naughty boy, raising the dead and all kinds of sinister magics like that, so we're going to go and stop him, hopefully breaking whatever spells he's got in motion." he offered plainly "give rest to those who have none and life anew to them who merely survive."

[Supercape]

GM

 

"The dead? Yes....the dead. That seems...right. That seems what he would do. For love..." she said, sorrowfully. 

 

"I hear him sometimes. By the colloseum. Playing. He wakes the dead with his music. It is a strange thing, for something so beautiful to begat something some full of horror" she said. 

 

At this point, she started to fade. "Careful then, for the only way to break his spell might be to break him..."

 

She faded back to view for a breif second. 

 

"And beware this lake, for something wicked this ways comes..."

 

The lake began to ripple; quite unusual for its normal mirror like surface. Something was rumbling in its depths...

 

"I hope ya can swim..." muttered the Gravedigger, hefting his machete. 

[Exaccus]

"ill do my best." he said in response the the ghosts words, evidently these was more afoot then Gravedigger cared to disclose, but now was evidently not the time to ponder such things as ponderously as he might ponder them, turning to the rippling water with hardend eyes, his heart hardening to steel in the face of whatever monster might be making its appearance now.

 

"Run to the other shore, I will hold it off!" he rumbled with the power of the shifting continents as he lept lethagically but with undeniable weight into the water and began his descent to the bottom.

 

He couldn't change form, if he did, the walkway would crumble and they would both be at the mercy of whatever foul creature hid within the lake, he could however track their progress through the tremors of the ground and do his best to run interferance.

[Supercape]

GM

 

Pixie, for her part, did her normal and turned invisible. "Run? Run you say? Well...ummm....sure!" she concluded, as the water started to churn ever more. And run she did, by the sound of her light footsteps on the bridge. 

 

The Gravedigger hefted his Machete again. "I not be running. It not me nature" he explained. 

 

Perhaps he would change his mind however. For from the cool clear depths came a behemoth!

 

A rotting beast! A zombie squid! Twenty of thirty feet long, with tentacles just as long. And it looked intent on feasting on brains!

[Exaccus]

He could feel it long before he could see it, its massive frame shooting through the waters like a putrid harpoon,  no heartbeat, no breathing or whatever might have passed for it amongst Cephalopoda and the like.

 

 His soily body became almost immediately soden with the stagnent waters of the lake, impeding his movements some but he would manage, as he always hard.

 

Earth Abides he intoned within his mind as he leveled a muddy limb towards the writhing mass of tentacles and prepared to launch a mighty clod of earth at a monster he could feel far better than see.

 

Rather an out of place creature....squids dwelled in the sea rather than lakes...though that means little to magic.

[Supercape]

GM

 

"Squids? Dis a lake not an ocean!" commented the Gravedigger, displaying either mind reading abilities or a remarkable knowledge of marine biology. Still, he grew up in an Island.

 

"This is a magic lake, silly!" replied Pixie, her voice vanishing as she ran with her uncanny speed to the other said. 

 

"True. Not like any lake I have bin seen..." agreed the Gravedigger. 

 

The zombie squid did not comment. If it had any mind whilst alive, it had rotted away. Instead, its tentacles started encroaching on Fascimile and the Gravedigger. 

 

Its smell was extremely awful, as one might expect from rotting squid flesh. 

[Exaccus]

it was a strange sensation to feel ones arm seperate itself from his body, becoming lifeless motionless matter its it rocketed through the water, propelled to its target by the tremendous force of influenced momentum.

 

It had of course already grown back and able to properly seperate it through concious effort he'd avoided the painful side effects usually associated with ripping out chunks of ones self and throwing them at enemies as uncommon a tactic as it might've been for those not composed of regenerative matter (or those blessed with the abilities of starfish)

 

his shot raced towards the beak behind the wall of rotten tentacles!

[Supercape]

GM

 

The earthen clod hit the rotting squid square on, and some kind of bubbling fleshy sound poured from its face. The tentacles jerked a moment, and then pounced on Fascimile. 

 

In a moment, he could feel himself hoisted ten or twenty feet in the air, two giant tentacles coiled round his body in an iron embrace. If the smell was bad before, now it was hellish. 

 

The Gravedigger screamed a war-cry and hacked and slashed with his machete at the tentacles which poured fourth a disgusting putrid ooze, but did not release their grip on Fascimile.

[Exaccus]

His muddy body wouldn't react in time and given the scale and sheer number of limbs racing towards him, even if he could it was unlikely to have made much of a difference he was wrenched from the lake-bed and began to feel his clodden chest starting to cave in from the squeezing, sparing a brief glance around he could see that pixie had made it to the other shore and gravedigger, true to his words had opted to fight the squid somewhat ineffectually it might be added.

 

so with a deep sigh he let himself transform to air, not the calm, cool and all but unnoticeable breeze, this time he was a swirling mass of ephermial Air, more a tornado with a roughly human appearnace than a man made from Atmosphere, of course his soil bridge collapsed the moment he changed and sent gravedigger and bitey plunging into the lake.

 

after a brief moment of deliberation he willed the winds to whirl and scoop gravedigger and bitey from the water

 

"You do insssssist on being difficult don't you?"

[Supercape]

GM

 

Gravedigger, holding the cage with Bitey in, was not going to argue. He might have got wet, but getting away from the monster that faced them seemed a more important priority. 

 

And in this, he was right. 

 

For a giant tentacle swung through the air and clocked him full on. It was extraordinary he was not pulverised. Fascimile could swear her heard some ribs crack, and then the Gravedigger was flying through the air, landing fifty feet away with a loud "splosh" in the still lake. He had all the air knocked out of him, and his limbs were stunned. This meant he started to sink. 

 

On the positive side, Fascimile still had Bitey and the cage bobbing up and down in the air currents...

[Exaccus]

"ah for the love of..." facsimile felt himself getting a touch annoyed but rather than let it get to him he instead focused on what he needed to do here and now.

 

"Ssssorry bitey this is gonna get pretty wet!" though he couldn't understand the head by any means he felt he owed at least that much to him before tossing him towards the far side of the lake, not directly at pixie of course but near enough to save her presumably tired legs.

 

with that he set after the downed gravedigger with his whirling control of the wind!

Edited August 19, 2018 by Exaccus

[Supercape]

GM

 

The Squid, mindless (presumably it still had brain tissue, but it was dead brain tissue) started swirling and thrusting its tentacles, creating quite the disturbance on the otherwise placid lake. Spying the Gravedigger in the water, it started swimming towards the sinking man. 

 

However, in this endeavour it was outdone; for Fascimile churned through the water and picked up the Gravedigger. Together, they landed on the side of the lake as the defeated Squid once more sank to the depths of the lake. 

 

"What...the...hell...." groaned the Gravdigger, wheezing. It was fairly clear he had at least cracked a few ribs. Somehow, whilst dazed and coughing up the lakes water, he still gripped - with an iron strength - his rusty machete. He even jerked his arm, fighting imaginary zombies with it...

[Exaccus]

"that ssssquid clobbered you whiilst i was trying to get you and bitey out of the lake...im suprised you're not in the next postcode let alone able to move and speak..." he spoke plainly, being made of air having loosend or removed some of his filters but he was unperturbed.

 

"Gone now, No brains to ssssnack on ssssomething like that....doesn't seem very. ssssmart. to sssay the least." casting his gaze to the once again serene lake "Not gonna eat sssssushi for a good long time i tell you what."

 

not paying any mind to the machette as it passed through him  "hey pixie do you know firssst aid? i can make some bandages..."

Edited August 20, 2018 by Exaccus

[Supercape]

GM

 

"Uuuuhh....I feel like I bin hit by a train" groaned the Gravedigger. "mmmhh....but I'm tougher than I look, yeah? Me huntin zombies and ghouls, I put enchantment on me body. Make me strong..." he said, proudly. 

 

But even still, he needed some help getting up. 

 

"I'm hurt. Bad. But I make it, yeah! We can still go...." he said, detemined. He gripped his machete even tighter. "But me not eat suchi again, haha. Dat de truth!" he said, his voice now pale despite his iron will. 

 

"Oh dear. You poor man" said Pixie, sadly, appearing by his side in the blink of an idea. 

 

"Never mind dat, woman. We got a job to do. And when me find the witch man, me do more to 'im dan break a few ribs..." he grinned, fueled by vengeance. 

[Exaccus]

"jeeze man, what'd this guy do to you...ive had broken ribs before i know how much that it sucks...but are you gonna win this fight if you can't see straight or breath right?" He asked still a swirling mass of air devoid of filters but honestly curious.

 

"I mean ill be helping even if im not sold on killing the guy but awesome as i am theres only so much i can do at once." Looking to pixie and then around at the surroundings.

 

"Hows bitey by the way pix? Stick the landing?"

[Supercape]

GM

 

With all the smashing and flying and so on, Bitey's cage has smashed. 

 

Not that Bitey could do anything about it other than complain, in Latin. Propelling oneself along the ground by means of your jaw only was a virtually impossible task, even if you were just a rotting head without any matching body. 

 

"He ain't happy. But at least he isnt getting poked around...by which I mean tortured...by our friend" muttered Pixie. She was hoppiong slightly from left to right, uncomfortable when she recalled how the Gravedigger had treated the skull. And doubly uncomfortable since the Gravedigger was also smashed about himself now. Was the pain of a living body the same as that of a dead one?

 

"Witch Man he ain't made of steel, like you and me are" muttered the Gravedigger to Fascimile. "He no warrior. He be a sorcerer, and me sure 'im bleed like any man. And if not, me got this..." he explained, indicating his machete. "Me enchanted it, y'see. It make anything bleed!"

[Exaccus]

"Well its up to you really." there really wasn't much more to say "Still take a minuet to catch your breath, we got quite a hike left according to bitey. last thing we need is to get split up in this weird place." body returning once more flesh and blood "So back to regular human walkin'" he offered in unbidden explanation.

 

Grave digger had pointedly avoided talking about his personal stake in the affair but knowing that his machette was enchanted to deal with magical hijinks was reassuring, good to keep in mind if things started to go south.

 

"Riding in a whirlwind is only slightly more fun than the bruising a steel body carrying would give ya....though if we had a boat i could turn myself into a wave of water and try to make that a smooth ride..something to try another time perhaps."