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

...well colour Aleks surprised. And suspicious.

fallen_star

"Well! That looks promisingly sorted, but let's go make sure. ...How exactly does eating dead people relay their memories...?" she wonders to Aleks in an undertone, a little caught up on how completely nonsensical that sounds.

kaleido_gogi

"Some sort of device."

The Dendra O'hur are a cult one of her brothers started a while back, he thinks for her benefit. Melmoth is what he was called, Aleks believes, and they have a whole thing about knowledge never being extinguished and making sure it lives on. By eating the dead like that. But they have a fairly strong indictment against killing people, it's the opposite of the point, people should live a full life creating things and learning things and only be eaten once they are dead to make sure all of that is preserved.

Or so it goes. Disgusting, if you ask Aleks.

soul_of_adventure

But Tahir notices them.

OUR LOVE INTEREST RETURNS ...we agree but we think you are wrong about who it is

"Aleks! Castoff! We have caught the killer!"

fallen_star

Yeah, it sounds... pretty disgusting. Logical, though? She guesses she doesn't have a problem with it, on principle. If everyone's consenting. But then it starts getting into the fuzzy grey area of 'And we also eat executed convicts and use that knowledge to hunt down their friends,' where that's perfectly logical, but also aesthetically distasteful. Also what if people don't want their memories to live on, what then?

"Congratulations!" she says with a smile, because regardless, she is glad that there is no longer a crazy murderer on the loose.

"You two took your time," observes Fulsome, eyeing them both.

fallen_star

"Sorry. I turned out to have castoff business with Matkina, and Aleks didn't want to leave me alone with her. But it seems like Tahir relayed everything important?"

"Yeah. Good job. Thanks." He looks at Aleks. "But half of your doubled fee's going to golden boy over there, because he did half your job. So. You get your usual."

soul_of_adventure

spoils QUEST REWARDS the blood price TREASURE

kaleido_gogi

"That's fine," says Aleks, still squinting suspiciously at the golden man.

He's actually... competent?

"Figured it would be," agrees Fulsome. He knows how Aleks works by now.

"And hello, my dear," says the skeleton man with glittering eyes and a knowing smile, to Vetmera, "I don't believe we've met. Fulsome mentioned you, am I to understand you're the reason the symbol was figured out so quickly? Well done, and thank you for your civil service."

fallen_star

"Uh. Matkina was the one who knew the specifics. But. Happy to help. It's nice to meet you, I'm Vetmera."

"Imbitu, head of the church of Dendra O'hur in Sagus Cliffs. A pleasure. Do let me know if you see any more hints of this, hmm?" He would really rather Fulsome not get involved if this happens again, thank you, this is church business. "You're one of the few who can observe the signs in complete safety."

fallen_star

"Oh. Uh. Yes." Is she being threatened? She might be being threatened. ... No, intimidated, he's just trying to intimidate her. It's working.

kaleido_gogi

You know who's more intimidating than old skeleton dude? Aleks is. He moves barely an inch, and yet the way he looks at Imbitu and his posture make it very clear that he is not intimidated and if he wants to get to Vetmera he will go through Aleks first.

soul_of_adventure

"—wait, you got a name!" realises Tahir, belatedly. "Congratulations! It is a pretty name."

WE HAVE THE BEST NAME we don't know that WE CHOSE IT OURSELVES SO IT MUST BE THE BEST you literally just chose the same name we were using before WE CHOSE IT

Imbitu just smiles pleasantly at Aleks. He's just helping her find her legs here in the Underbelly! He's helping. Really.

fallen_star

"It's fine," she murmurs to Aleks, patting his arm. He is a sweetie and she appreciates him. "And yes! I did. Thank you, I like it."

kaleido_gogi

"Everything seems well and truly solved, then."

Can they leave.

soul_of_adventure

WHAT'S OUR NEXT ADVENTURE we don't have one WHAT adventures don't usually chain together like that WE NEED TO FIND ONE

fallen_star

It's kind of interesting how much of the Tahir beneath the nanites keeps poking through. She hopes that he's okay, in there. Underneath the two beings fighting over him and making him quest relentlessly.

But yes, she doesn't want to deal with these other people anymore, if the crisis is over she wants to go back with Aleks to his apartment and be very distracted and not think of any of this nonsense.