Red Tide | Glowfic Constellation

Her first conscious experience is a weightless feeling, the muffled sound of wind, and the gnawing feeling that she's forgotten something terribly important. It's like waking up from deep sleep with all the world around her ablaze, except worse. Was she asleep? She feels like she'd been dreaming, but that's not right. It's sort of right, but it isn't, and she can't put any words to why. There's no before the not-dreaming, she doesn't know her name or who she is or what she even looks like. This... does not seem normal. Wait, that doesn't make sense, either. How does she have any idea what normal is when she doesn't remember anything at all? She doesn't understand. What is this thing she's in, why is there the sound of wind, why does her weight seem weird, why does she have a concept of what weight is and isn't weird, isn't that more strange than anything else?

And then the protective cocoon around her tears, and is ripped away, and many of her questions are answered. The ones that aren't are tabled for later, because she has bigger problems right now. Like falling out of the sky. Like that. Quite reasonably, her second conscious experience is panic. This does not seem like a problem she is equipped to solve. Knowledge from... somewhere... notes that this fall is not from the kind of height people survive, especially not someone completely unprepared. A confused amnesiac is probably even less equipped to handle it than the average person. This is so incredibly unfair.

She has enough practicality to flatten herself out to catch the wind. This buys her enough time to figure out that she has no kind of device, some parachute or propulsion system or something, to slow her own fall or catch enough wind to slow herself down enough. And then also to curse, or at least try to, because the ground is very close and she is out of time.

"Oh, fuc—" she begins, and then is cut off by crashing (painfully) into some kind of large glass dome. Ha, she thinks, through the pain and the confusion as she crashes through it, at least I beat the dome in resilience! This is an outrageously petty victory, but it's all she has.

Then she crashes into something else, and all she knows is pain and darkness.

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kaleido_gogi

"Fulsome," Aleks says, this time to the man himself. "What... happened?"

soul_of_adventure

Tahir was about to say something but he stops and turns around to face the new arrivals.

THE LOVE INTEREST RETURNS we already concluded that was a red herring OH RIGHT

"Aleks! And castoff! A most serious situation! An unsolved murder of an innocent."

"That," Fulsome inclines his head towards the bloodstain and hand, "used to be Wheedle."

As in... Fulsome's protégé. The guy Fulsome was grooming to replace him if something happened to the man himself. So, as good as his son. Fulsome's face is a mask of calm, but it doesn't take a mind reader to know that he is livid. Tahir is lucky he hasn't been shanked by one of Fulsome's cronies, but Fulsome considers him to be an irritating bystander, and irritating bystanders don't get shanked just for being irritating. Now, if Tahir tries to push past the goons guarding the murder scene, that would be another story.

He looks at Tahir, then at Aleks' much less annoying companion, then back at Aleks. "You know this.... person?" Head incline to Tahir.

kaleido_gogi

"In a manner of speaking," Aleks replies. "He... led a crowd to stop a public execution upstairs, yesterday."

soul_of_adventure

A PROPER HEROIC SCENE too bad we didn't kill the overseer

"A most barbaric custom, if you ask me! Not that you need ask me, of course, it is self-evident. And the man was innocent!"

"We don't do things the same way down here," says one of Fulsome's goons. "You're in a different jurisdiction now. And you'd better have more respect for this boss."

Fulsome himself is looking at Aleks's companion again.

fallen_star

Aaaaaa what is that symbol why does she know it why does it fill her with such terror she doesn't even have any actual memories associated with it, it's just bad!

"You got something to say, wayward star?" asks Fulsome, pointedly.

fallen_star

She jumps.

"U-um. I think I recognize the symbol. Uh. From my nebulous castoff memories." She glances at Fulsome, who apparently does not need this explained to him. And... seems to know who she is. Okay that's. Great. That's great. "But nothing concrete, just a, a. Sense of foreboding. Um. Sometimes proximity helps jog things."

Fulsome raises an eyebrow, then looks at Aleks.

soul_of_adventure

wayward star? SHE IS THE FALLING STAR FROM YESTERDAY that makes no sense NOTHING DOES many things do

kaleido_gogi

"I trust her," Aleks says, simply.

"Then come take a look. Watch your step."

fallen_star

You know, it's funny, that's worded like a request, but everybody here knows it isn't! But. Okay, yes. She'll get a closer look at the foreboding symbol on the wall that makes her want to flee back to Aleks's apartment and hide under the covers.

She stands before a blank wall. Sickening purple-black light spills from around the corner behind her. It's her temple, hers, and she's been driven into a dead end by that woman.

Blood seeps through the wall from the other side, soaking through in a familiar shape. Frightened, confused, she traces the line...

fallen_star

Oh no. Oh no. Oh fuck no—

... a gate opens with a wet crunch. Fresh blood streams from the edges of the symbol, and she's yanked through the hollow of its center, and into the horrible world beyond.

A strip of blistered land coils through a black, writhing void. The air is thick and foul, textured with the slickness of maggots. Nausea slams into her, filling her head. Infecting her thoughts. This place is wrong. It should not be. An ordinary mind would break, but hers is held aloft on a tidal scaffold, untouchable by the creeping fingers attempting to wriggle their way into it.

But she can still feel them. She can still sense something, some sort of mind in that fathomless darkness. Seeking, tasting. Joyful. Hungry.

fallen_star

The castoff flinches away from the wall with a strangled shriek.

kaleido_gogi

And Aleks is already there, faster than the blink of an eye, keeping her from falling.

soul_of_adventure

THAT WAS VERY DASHING AND HEROIC he is too fast HE MUST GET INTO GREAT ADVENTURES he looks very sad MAYBE FROM A LACK OF ADVENTURES maybe from too many

Tahir himself looks like he aborted the movement of trying to stop her from falling; he doesn't have permission to help, after all, and it would not be very heroic to break rules like that with no reason.

RULES ARE BAD FOR ADVENTURING rules are for breaking

fallen_star

“I’m fine,” she says, entirely for Aleks’s benefit. Even as she absolutely clings to him and can’t seem to stop shivering.

“You need to clean this off of the wall. Without touching it.” Fulsome looks unimpressed, but she continues. “Copy down the symbol in another medium but there is something and it is watching for that symbol in blood specifically and. And we don’t want it to look at us.”

“… Anything else?” Fulsome is really unamused by someone playing knowing seer without actually giving anything substantial.

fallen_star

“Um. This is to try to get something to open a door to a, I think another dimension.” Shiver. “And not a nice one. lt breaks people. Mentally. I don’t think anyone that wants to go there is okay.”

“A door to another dimension,” sighs Fulsome. “Made by someone who’s carked. And it’s bloody castoff business.”

This does make the next person to question very obvious, doesn’t it.

“Aleks, would you be willing to pay Matkina a visit?” He motions to the wall. “Maybe see if she can weigh in.”

He’d send one of his more loyal followers, but Aleks is the only one in the Underbelly that could plausibly beat her in a direct fight by himself. For ordinary people to stand a chance against a jumpy, half crazy, paranoid castoff, it’d need to be a whole squad. And they’d probably come back with casualties.

kaleido_gogi