floatingplot | Team Idiots / Part 2

[Many things, let's discuss it over tea sometime.]

Oh, right. We have to keep going and figure out what that god is...

Remind me to try a blue truth sometime. It seems interesting.

We can discuss it later, I'm sure I can come up with a game for us to play...

[Sure hope you like mysteries, Ed. No, you don't get any scooby snacks. Anyway, Battler's turning to look over the horizon for...anything that looks like a sign where to go.] But we really need to get out of here.

Can you fly? [He hovers on his own.] If not, I can cast something... we can look faster that way.

[The horizon doesn't seem to grant you clues, beyond Water and also Water, but it's hard to see through all the high rises from ground level.]

...I-it's not how I'd like to travel. [Battler...looks a little queasy at the mention of 'flying'. He could, in theory, but he'd fall for sure!

So, he takes a middle road, bursting into a swarm of gold butterflies that proceed to nest in Ed's hair. God help them both.]

[Ed goes flying up into the sky, looking for some kind of important hub.

And because he knows better, he will be making sure to avoid any errant dripping water on the way. Butterflies and water don't mix, bro.]

[As you fly past a rotted high rise, a screen crackles to life.

Current events feed missing, beginning playback...
Rioters are once again out in force as social order breaks down. With no word from the royal family about contact with our God, it seems hopeless for us. Burning effigies of the Servants in the street is a common sight now, as w&*(error, playback corrupted.

All roads seem to lead to the centre of the city, although the centre itself is still obscured by the skyline.]

[While this all sounds very creepy, Battler's kind of concerned Ed will run out of energy and they'll fall and die and it'll be awful.]

So they destroyed themselves...

Hahah. That's... not good.

That's really... not good. These poor people...

[He continues flying on, somber. If you can sense magic, Battler, this kid's got way too much of it.]

[You find graffiti scrawled along the walls you swing past- Jesus, how did they graffiti up here?

Oh, wait. Wings.

“OUR HOPE HAS CRASHED AND BURNED
THE SERVANTS SENT US HERE AS A WARNING
THE REST OF US WILL NOT FALL TO SUCH THREATS”

Beside it is scrawled a symbol of ocean waves inside a circle.

You're closing in on the centre now.]

...So they were above the water... and then they crashed into the water... and then the servants got problematic?

I guess that makes sense. I've noticed that people you hire tend to get really mad when you have to make any sort of cutback or change.

[Current events feed missing, beginning playback...

The administrator of the popular online board Make Waves has been arrested for inciting riots. At her arrest, she has confessed to worshipping the Servants, and deliberately stirring up riots and anti-God sentiment in her board. She is believed to have deliberately planned many if not all of the riots in the past month. Her board has been shut down, and now we may have peace once more.

And then the screen goes dead. Not far left... ]

...and dystopia. [Ed lands about now, since they were nearing the end of the road.]

They killed themselves from the inside out.

Imagine I said that in red. Because it should be.

[Now that they've landed, the butterflies flap off Ed and coalesce back into Battler, who is now sporting a fucking badass cape.]

...You don't need to tell me that. But it sounds like Servants isn't the same as a butler or something, in this case.

[In the centre of the city...

It was a glorious thing, you can see white marble through the soot, broken statues littering the ground that once rivalled the Michael. Far larger than any of the temples on Atuin, this is the temple to the God itself.

And it is patterned in waves.]

...Hey, Battler?

I think this might be a temple to the Ocean god.

Who I think might be evil.

...We should be ready for a fight, just in case.

...Really. [Ed, He's been redtexted as incompetent, and he thinks you're an idiot.]

You're probably right, though. But if this is what the Game Master wants us to see, then we have to see it.

Well then. Let's go.

[Ed pushes open the door.]

[This level of the temple is covered in cracking tile murals, no doubt once beautiful and colorful. They show a simple story:

The God appears on a world of raging water, alone.

He builds an island, and He crafts people to live on it, people in His image with all the traits of Humans, Long, Bast and Angha.

They shine like a beacon, so brightly that things begin to reach towards the world. Black things that eclipse the moon and sun, things reaching with twisted limbs and baring fractal teeth.

So He reaches into the crystal heart of the world and breaks away four crystals.

In His hands, they become four people, each a pale mirror to His own brilliance, for they only have one trait each of the species.

The blue-robed one, holding a sparkling rainbow fire, him merely the human body.

The red-robed one, casting dice with a smile, she who possesses only the glorious wings of the Angha.

The green-robed one, grasping a halberd, with the strength of the Long.

The yellow-robed one, wielding a sword, with the ears and eyes of the Bast.

Those four kneel at the four corners of the world and keep away the dark things while He stands king over all.

It ends there.

There is an altar at the back of this room, a heavy wooden thing, with a priest slumped over it clutching a scroll.

In the far corner there is an door opened to the first steps of a spiral staircase leading upwards.]

Edited 2012-06-14 05:35 (UTC)

...[Eyeing the mural, before huffing out a low breath.] We need to get out of here and tell people about this...

[But he feels like he's missing something. So he'll go get that scroll.] Sorry, old man.

...Oh! I get this!

The Ocean god made the world of water, then made a island. Then he made the original race--those zombie guards from before.

Then something bad came for the things on the island, and he split his power among four other gods too. So... then they held back the darkness... and the Ocean god watched over everything... and he made the islands, too.

This kinda. Is important. Really important. But why does everyone hate him? That's... actually things a good god would do.

[The priest is robed, not monstrous, untouched by the contamination of magic madness somehow. The scroll unrolls into a map of the ancient world.

It shows five cities.

East Blue, the city drenched in magic on the surface, attributed- To Isate, wait, what?
Atuin, the floating city of Cang Long.

These two, at least, aren’t changed:

Sakmet, the city of Metoth.
Saena, the city of Angha.

Those four each have a red cross somewhere on them, an X marks the spot in places you might know as untamed wilderness where nothing is. Totally. Of course the tourist and other modern maps of the cities are entirely accurate, trust your gods.

And the fifth, the capital in the center of all four:

Righad, the capital city.

There’s an extra new addition to the map, a messy scrawl of ‘Dome Righad’ on a piece of blank ocean.

But the map doesn’t end merely with the world. It shows a blank stretch of stars, and there’s an X up there, too...]

[...

Ed holds out a hand.

Now there are two maps, and he pockets the duplicate.]

...An X in the stars? [Even as dumb as he is, he knows he's missing something. But he carefully rolls the scroll back up, and tucks it back in the priest's arms.]

Let's try the staircase.

[Up the staircase is a room.

A gate is present in it, a mirror to the gate present in Atuin. But all of its exposed crystals are dark, and it does not do anything more than glow a little harder at their presence.

It's going to need power, a lot of power, and that is a problem because in the distance through the open windows you can see the tentacle mouthed monsters pouring out of the jail. Left to attack the guards, the guards left to mindlessly attack them, splitting, splitting...

An army of hungry scaled things is pouring out, and, well, a gigantic magic signal...]

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