Steel in Wormverse
+ Show First Post
Total: 1210
Posts Per Page:
Permalink
There is... quite a lot of it. The southern island (island, pff, it's far huger than any Tile she's ever seen), with the exception of the plateaus she raised, is pretty thoroughly destroyed, and the southern half of it sunken.

...someone is following her from a distance as she explores.
Permalink
Now is a more appropriate time to figure out the language problem.

She approaches and addresses that person in the four human languages, two Fair Folk tongues, and the one merfolk schoolsong she knows.

When it's clear she still doesn't have a common language, here, she tries to mime eating. She's hungry.
Permalink
The person—Mountain may recognize her as the one who had been hitting the monster with her fists—looks progressively confused and worried when she doesn't recognise any of the languages the Fate's speaking. She nods when Mountain mimes eating, and touches her ear and says something, holding a hand up in a 'wait' gesture.

Then, a fairly high-tech... flying... thing... comes from the distance and hovers high above them. The woman asks something, hovering and pointing at the thing. Maybe she wants Mountain to come with her?
Permalink

She shrugs and follows into the flying thing. There's not much point in talking when they can't understand each other, and she's not quite sure where to begin learning an entire new language without the benefit of translations.

Permalink
They enter the flying thing, and the flying thing... flies. Really fast.

There are comfortable seats inside, and apparently the lady informed someone Mountain wanted food, because there is food waiting. She points at herself and says, "Alexandria." She gestures expansively at the food on a table there and says, "Food."
Permalink
Communication crystals in their ears are not weird to her.

"Food." Nod, nod. Pointing to herself, "Mountain." It sounds more like "Celtana" in English, of course. Then the helmet breaks cleanly from the rest of her rock armor and she starts eating with impromptu utensils made from stone, if the kind of food this is calls for them.
Permalink

There are non-stoney utensils available with the food, but if she wants to use hers Alexandria won't object. She does find it fairly odd that Mountain doesn't seem to care about her secret identity, and doesn't take her own mask off, but doesn't comment on it otherwise.

Permalink
While eating she makes a crude stone statue of Leviathan. "Monster." She moves it to the other side of the room. "Ran away?" Then she smashes it. "Or dead?"

Then a statue of the other one, the fire-monster. "And the other monster?"
Permalink

Alexandria does a so-so gesture to the first question, and nods at the second statue. She points at Mountain and herself and says, "Human." Then she points at the fire-monster and repeats, "Human." Finally, she points at the place where the remains of the rock statue and shrugs, shaking her head. Unknown if human?

Permalink
So they're all Fates..? That doesn't seem quite right. Alexandria gives off a vibe of 'Hills' more than anything else, but it still doesn't fit.

No, they're probably not Fates, but something else entirely. This place doesn't even have Tiles. She swears softly and makes another confused gesture. "Alexandria human, Celtana not human. This is pointless until we share more words."
Permalink
Alexandria tilts her head. Celtana thinks they're not the same kind of thing, which is odd since she's seen her fight Leviathan. Maybe the universe she's from has very different castes with parahumans? Because Alexandria is currently pretty certain Celtana is from another universe, and the way parahumans might be treated elsewhere can be arbitrarily different.

She sighs and shrugs. She'll try to see if the Protectorate can get their hands on someone with a power useful for translation.
Permalink
She finishes eating, then tries to carve a rune of Cold into the back of her helmet with a diamond pick.

When the rune is complete, nothing happens.

Calamity. No magic. Not that she would have been able to do anything particularly impressive, without access to materials from her world. At last the facets of her essential to being a Fate still work.
Permalink

Alexandria watches this curiously, looking at the handiwork. "That reminds me of Myrddin's runes," she says, even if Celtana won't understand.

Permalink
"They don't work. Nevermind." For the same reason. She smooths it over with her hands.

She's quiet for a long while. But as the ship passes over the Northwestern Passages of Canada she frowns, points down and mimes shaking.
Permalink

Alexandria frowns and speaks into her ear-crystal thing. There's quite some conversation there, then she says, "Now I'm really impressed." And mimes/expresses that using what's visible of her face and body language.

Permalink

Shrug. "I'm a Fate. We feel the health of the world. Though I'm not sure why I'm even saying anything, since we don't understand each other."

Permalink

Alexandria reacts about as well as one would expect to after hearing such an extended sentence in a completely unknown language, but she does recognise a few of those words from other things she's said—eidetic memory and supersmarts—and repeat them to her, slowly.

Permalink

Vocabulary lesson on things-easily-pointed-to then.

Permalink

Alexandria repeats them with very little in the way of an accent, and asks about more things, getting pencil and paper to draw things and ask about them, too.

Permalink
She solicits the English versions of her words but doesn't remember them quite so readily. Grammar is a bit trickier than nouns and verbs, though.

This could cover the rest of the flight time quite easily.
Permalink

So it could. And, lacking any objections, so it will.

Permalink

She does object eventually, asking for more food. "Fight was hard."

Permalink

More food is definitely available.

Permalink
She keeps asking about other kinds of people, and is surprised that it's only humans.

She goggles a bit at the scale of the city, when they arrive. "...How many humans?"
Permalink

Alexandria has presumably taught and learnt how to both write and say numbers. "7.43 million, approximately."

Total: 1210
Posts Per Page: