Sunday, April 26, 2015

Dreams

I shouldn't be using the blog as a dream journal. But to be honest, it's sort of fallen to shit. All of its brightness was originally meant by Amos to show off how bright his memories were of us all growing up. Now it just seems garish and...I don't want to say ironic.

I had a dream about that canyon that Derek talked about.

In the dream, I was someone else. Another Sam. His name kinda rolled around in my mouth but now that I've woken up (I have woken up?) His Enemy was there, in that cave at the bottom of the canyon that all of Derek's alternate Slimechaps swirled around in. The King of Time. The Second Enemy of the Multiverse, wearing red robes with just void inside. (A dream version of Amos said he looked like he was from a comic book. Trust me, I don't know which one, but it also had something to do with Time.) The cave had to be a gateway to the Multiverse--a relic of something on our own Earth-Gamma.

He--the Time King--started talking to me, "even though," he said, "you've caught some of the good Doctor's emanations." Some of his words stuck to my head better than others. I remembered him saying something about "syzygy," "invasion," "Dieselworld," and "fox." Those words were heavy. (I don't know what I mean by that.)

He said that the cave was faulty in some way--the gate it offered was stuck flickering between worlds, too fast for even Tamaron to use it. Someone walking in there would be thrown to a random world, with no guarantee of an easy return. But with fuschium, impregnated with the energies of our world's status as the Paradise Earth, he could stop the flickering and choose the world he walked to. He would return to Earth-Alpha and fulfill his destiny.

The fuschium had a special significance to me. The Time King showed it to me and it was exactly as I envisioned it. I don't really know how to say this, but it was suddenly like I was wearing "magic goggles." Reality became psychedelic, almost, like when Frank used drugs to walk into Earth-Gamma. I saw that the fuschium had a place that it had been taken from, when it had been given to Tamaron by the Shiqquwts. It had been crafted by a race of beings called--shit. A.S. had a name for them. The name of that Zodiac guy.

Zom. The race was called Zom. They were like genies because they created the will-reactive fuschium. Just like Zom of the Zodiac. (Of course they turned out to be something--just like Terry was Marcel, and Marcel was the Tarasque. And now Marcel is Tamaron.) They want to help us fight Tamaron, because he's an ally of the Shiqquwts. I would assume that means that the Zom and the Shiqquwts are at war.

And the Zom started speaking to me then. Again, I can't remember everything that was said, but there was something about us four Gauds. Four Gauds to fight five jikininki.

In Japanese mythology the jikininki are hungry ghosts. But the King of Time took over to show me this next part. He took me to the diesel-scented void between worlds, which I saw at once was the astral plane, or one of them at least. Back in time, we came upon five souls suspended in space. They were members of Cyrus Sincodemius' cult, and it was Tamaron's magic from back when he was in his first body that was keeping these souls here. They were incubating in the swirling not-fluids of wherever we were.

Then, many centuries later, the souls were entangled in living bodies on our Earth.

Each of the five were aligned to different elements. Fire. Earth. Water. Air. And Ether. Four of these jikininki or jikininki-holders (like how we are not technically Gauds, but Gauds exist in our bodies) are now at rest. Their hunger is ended, thanks to us...

I realized that just before I woke up.

I'm sorry, none of this may make any sense. It may have just been a dream, but...

I kinda got chills down my spine when the last words of the dream pressed hard into my brain.

"Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?"

Saturday, April 18, 2015

Gremlin

Qom is being a good friend and transcribing this for me. (This is A.S. He said that he missed the feel of writing and so we all want to pitch in and give him at least a simulation of that feeling again.) Because it's a transcription, I'm going to be very brief. In any case, I don't like praising myself for my accomplishments and so I don't want to talk too much about what happened.

Gremlin attacked.

Our theory that each foe is deadlier than the last is definitely right. You'd think air isn't that bad to fight, but it is. As soon as he appeared we were ready. I was upstairs in our, uh, "home," when I say Garry and Derek take the offensive. As they always have before.

Cue sharp winds coming in. Really sharp. So sharp they slitted Derek's cheek right below the bone, and his torso beneath the ribs. I heard his screams and my blood went cold. I felt helpless like I did the last fucking three battles. So I got into position to do something, anything. (Use italics for emphasis, Qom, you asshole. I know you do it in your own posts.)

Tamaron must be aware of the fact that strangulation or drowning or any loss of air (there you go) is the most agonizing way to die. Because after slicing Derek up, he started taking away Garry's air. Garry's track record isn't good in turns of drowning. (It's true.) But Qom was up with me. And I gave him instructions on what to do.

While he got to work in drawing the guy closer to the house. Meanwhile, I got to work--as much as I could, with my stumps--at rending the rotten boards of this place. And pushing my bed close to the soon to be removed wall.

Qom got him below my room. Close to the house. I don't know how he did it exactly since the guy's ranged abilities are more obvious than the others. Maybe he was just really fucking arrogant. But in any case, my upper arms are still good enough to make the wall snap outward.

I heard Gremlin say "Huh?" as he heard the crack.

And then the bed was on him.

So that's my contribution.

Qom has air magic now. I don't know how else to say that. Comedic frankness being my thing (I think?), I guess it's appropriate.

So that's it, then! All four elements, brutally murdered by a pack of wilderness-dwelling young adults. What's next?

Saturday, April 4, 2015

Kappa

Maybe I should be the one to explain this.

After all, I'm apparently the one who started flexing his Gaud powers or whatever.

Kappa came after us, as one might expect. I'm sure someone's joked about this before, but Tamaron seems to be working on martial arts movie rules. Only one guy can attack at a time.

Assuming he's also going with the Avatar model (gah), his minions can move any sort of form of their assigned element. So when Garry was having lunch with me in the "living room," he started complaining to me about getting really thirsty. I went to get him one of the water jugs, and when he came back, he was sweating and gasping. He told me he'd never been so thirsty in his life. That was when his sweat started trying to kill him.

Suddenly, all the sweat flashed off his face and formed an undulating sphere of water that just hung in the air. We both stared at it for a second, before it suddenly lunged at his face. Like one of those sickness masks, it wrapped around his mouth and nose. And we knew what was happening.

Garry swatted at the sweat-blob, but it didn't go away--or if it was dispersed, moisture from the air just replaced what was lost. He started panicking--we both did. I sprinted outside...

There he was, just like all the others. Robes flowing as he stared at the house. I couldn't see his face but he was probably smiling. A.S. and Derek told me later that he had started working on them, too--why he didn't lash out at me, I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm the youngest. Or maybe Tamaron wanted him to make me alone, so he could get his sick fun out of breaking me down without any help in the world.

That made me angry.

And my anger reached into the dryness of the air. I know that doesn't make any sense, but I just the impression of my mind as a direction, gaining energies by passing through certain zones of...something. Images, ideas. My mental arrows dipped into the angry fire.

As a fireball flew towards Kappa, I felt my fingertips get singed. We both let out a yell. He shot a ray of water out of his hand to put out the fire, but his hood went down. And I saw he wasn't in fact smiling. He looked scared.

It felt good to make him afraid. And that satisfaction netted me another fireball.

I still don't know how I was doing it, but in the heat of the moment--sorry--it just all came together. I could control Ifrit's powers now. I realized that, and that gave me another idea...

I "fired" another arrow into the ground, and dug deep into the earth with my mind. I tried to imagine Golem. Just as my sweat and the water from the air around me starting drowning me, too, I managed to rip up a spike of fused dirt. He heard it tear itself free, and he turned to face it.

That's when I rammed it through his heart, stake-vampire style.

I'm told that I passed out shortly thereafter.

Since waking up, I was able to explain what had happened. (Everyone was fine, of course--the water-spell broke as soon as Kappa died.) At first, they were disinclined to believe me, until I showed them the spike in his body.

I myself wondered if these powers were just a fluke, brought on by confronting someone who was going to kill my friends.

But I pulled the earth open to bury Kappa, without touching it, and I just heated my ramen without a stove. I can make the broth in the bowl dance...

I guess wind will have to come later. Probably sooner rather than, though.