Summary:Halgrim chases down the bladed creature that they freed from the bunker, and learns a little bit more about her story. Log Info:Storyteller: Clockwork |
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Out of the room and out of the bunker, the very unhappy blade mistress moves with a speed that is impressive for someone who just woke up from a decades-long nap without even a first cup of coffee. She shows no signs of slowing or stopping as she makes her way up and out, those long tentacled appendages making quick work of pulling her up and toward the surface.
Fjorskar moves after the strange woman with the arms, driven by warring desires; she knows what it is to be imprisoned at the hands of those far less than yourself, yet she also can't allow an enraged being to run rampant. At least, not without gathering some knowledge of it. She can pass that on to the world shaper, or Adam her pack brother, or the Thorschild, or someone who will know what to do with her, if anything needs be done.
She's nowhere near as fast as the knife-wielder, and also has no desire to test her scales against those knives. So she sticks to a pace she can keep while making sure the knife wielder doesn't go out of scent range.
She's able to track the blade mistress up and out of the hole and into the landscape of the disaster zone. It's there that the creature comes to a very sudden stop, standing in the middle of the ruin that had once been an entire swath of New York City, a ruin that looks very much not like the city did when she last saw it, and it apparently gives her pause. The goo from the chamber she had been in begins to dry and vanish as it does, leaving her much less slimy. For a moment or two she just stares, turning slowly in place, and taking it all in. Her eyes are not unlike a cat's, a lambent sort of green, reflective.
Fjorskar comes to a half when she does, keeping her distance. Her yellow-green eyes narrow, shrewd and calculating, taking in details. After a moment of this she glances around them as well, sniffs. "They came. The constructs. Destroyed," she waves a clawed hand, "in the name of removing those like…me. You. Us."
Hearing the voice behind her seems to pull her immediately out of her reverie as she spins to face Fjorskar, all of those tentacled knives raised and aimed to strike. Catlike eyes narrow, and then she looks around again and asks, "Destroyed all? The country? The world?" It's a lot to take in, and of course she has no idea what lies beyond this one neighborhood.
Fjorskar crouches, bares her teeth when the knives come up but keeps still. "This city. Parts." Her eyes narrow. "Unsure of what else. I was a prisoner, then. I learned after, I escaped." Her words are halting and gravely, human language forced out of a mouth and throat not build for it.
She swivels her ears, listening to make sure they're not interrupted. The knife-being is tense and wary, but overall far less violent than Fjorskar ever has been in her position, and it would be nice, Fjorskar thinks, for it to remain this way. "Things…changed. The constructs, which did this, should be gone." Should. Fjorskar doesn't trust humans to get anything right, and it couldn't be more clear from her body language.
The knives come down, gradually, the tentacled appendages relaxing into a slow kind of idle undulation behind her as Fjorskar speaks. "I had nightmares. I saw great machines, and great destruction. I felt the pain of those trapped within fallen buildings. The choking heat of flame, and burning. I felt things shift, and change. I felt the world change, and then more destruction, more violence, more pain. I feared in the silence that came after, that I would wake and nothing would be left." She looks around slowly, moving at an unhurried pace now, her feet crunching in the dirt and rubble on the ground, as she surveys the area around her.
Fjorskar follows, still keeping her distance. "They let their fear, rule them. Like always, it lead them to foolish actions. …destructive ones." She snorts. "They never change." She sniffs, considers the woman. "You have the gift to sense beyond? Or perhaps…they were showing you. In the cage." Her name for the stasis chamber; after all, that's what it really was. Just another cage.
"I can sense powerful changes in the area around me," she says as she comes to a stop once more, "Nothing so small as a kitchen fire, or a man falling off a ladder. But a great conflagration? A falling building? A train collision. These things.. I get a sense of them just before they happen." She looks back toward Fjorskar and says, "Not.. a cage. Life support."
"Ah. The foresight. A difficult power to be burdened with." Fjorskar sounds like she doesn't envy the woman this, not one bit. She tilts her head, ears skewing. "You were…ill? Injured?" She begins reassessing what she has of Halgrim's dreamlike memories: the dead doctors, the slime from the chamber, surveys the woman anew.
"I am not from this.. dimension. I cannot survive long here. The worse the pain gets, the harder it is not to lash out. The chamber was to keep me until they found a way to make the cure permanent," she says as she glances down at her hands. They seem fine, for the moment, at least so far as anyone who doesn't know what they should look like can tell. "I am guessing that they did not."
Fjorskar lets out a slow breath. "Someone…slew them. The ones tending you." She tries to pick through Halgrim's vague memories of what he saw, but can't focus them, and grunts in annoyance. "Someone powerful," she adds, to make it clear they hadn't just been shot, or anything so mundane. She considers. "Can you be…returned? To your place?" As wholly reluctant as she is to bring him up, she adds, "I know, a worldshaper. He could be of…some assistance."
"The scientists didn't know how," she says with a shake of her head. "If you know of someone who can travel betewen worlds, perhaps they can." She approaches Fjorskar then, slowly, with those blades behind her, trailing more like long strands of hair than deadly appendages and offers out one hand. "My name is Yr'zylka. I am sorry if I frightened you. I was disoriented, and was unsure if I was in the nightmare or awake at first."
Fjorskar draws closer, wary but willing to trust for the moment. She sniffs at the offered hand, bumps it with her nose. "Yur-zill-kah," she repeats, mangling it in her attempt. "We are the heart which is torn. Fjorskar." She sits back on her heels, rests her wrists on her knees, draping her long claws. "The world shaper, has done such things. And…knows others. That manner of, warping, is…their way." Her lip curls. "Not mine. But…he has aided the host. So, I must make allowances. I can show you…a place to remain safe. Or," she glances back at the hole, "perhaps the…den, maybe be made functional, again."
"I will have maybe days," Yr'zykla warns, "before I become dangerous, if I am not able to return to the chamber. I can come with you, but not for more than a day or two, before I must return to the chamber. If the chamber no longer works.." She frowns, clearly not excited about that prospect. "I will have to be contained until I die, or killed."
Fjorskar makes a rumbling sound of comprehension. "Let us try your den. If…that functions, still. I will bring the world shaper to you. If not, my pack brother and I will find a way, to…contain you." She clearly hates calling it that, yet understands what Yr'zylka means. She huffs a sigh. "I may…need. To allow the host. To aid you. He is, more aware. Of such things." Or, at least, he can read English, and isn't fundamentally allergic to technology. Both bonuses.
Clockwork takes one more look around at the surface, that frown still hovering around her lips, but then she nods in agreement with Fjorskar and says, "I will follow you back, and we will see if I can resume my slumber there. If this world shaper of yours can return me to my home, I would be very grateful. I don't mind yours, but it is too dangerous, to me and to others."
"This world is no longer right for…many, things." Fjorskar turns to head back towards the hole. Unlike Halgrim, she won't have trouble climbing, as she can simply dig her claws into the various surfaces if needed. Also unlike him, she sniffs and examines things as they go, using her stronger senses to check for a sign of who might have slain Yr'zylka's keepers.
There is no sign of anyone in the bunker. There are the bodies, and Elmo's still in there somewhere doing his investigation of what all is in there, but the rest have departed, leaving Halgrim and Yr'zylka to return to the chamber. Once there, she looks at the device, which seems to still be on and humming away, even if it's in the middle of a puddle of viscous purple goo. "It seems to be operational," she says. "I think if I return inside and it is sealed once more, it should regenerate the stasis fluid."
Once they're back in the facility, Fjorskar shifts back to Halgrim, who spends a few minutes staring at Yr'zylka and trying to get his bearings. He manages, though, picking through the hazy memories he has from Fjorskar, and accompanies her to the device the Elmo helpfully opened. "Ah, alright," he says, nodding and looking it over. "Let's see if it does. If not, well, we'll try her other idea." He's trying not to shake from the adrenaline still flooding him. His last, personal memories of Yr'zylka are…a bit startling.
Yr'zylka studies Fjorskar as she is suddenly Halgrim, and that seems to fascinate her, enough so that she forgets for a moment what they were doing. "You must be the host," ehs says. Her English is quite good. She must have learned it from those who were helping her over the decade or more before she was tucked away indefinitely. "I will climb inside. If the fluid level here looks to be full, and no alarms go off, it should be operational. If it is, then I will remain in stasis until you open it again," she explains. "If it does not alarm and it does not work.. then we will not see one another again." She then points to a lever at the side. "When next you open it. Use this lever first. It will apply a sedative before the opening, so that I will not panic when the fluid exits the chamber."
Halgrim manages a weak smile. "Yes, I'm her, partner in crime, if you will." His English is likewise good, the lilting Scandinavian accent possibly different than her doctors'. He nods as she speaks, eyes the lever, blinks as he thinks of something. He pulls out his smartphone and takes a quick picture, of the champer and that lever in particular. "Understood. And, I'll fetch John as quickly as I can. Hopefully, he'll have a solution, or know who will." He sighs. "Sorry about allt his. We'll try to find whomever killed your doctors."
"It is kind of you to help me," Yr'zylka says as she moves back toward the opening of the chamber. "Thank you." Then she slips inside and pulls the door closed behind her. It doesn't quite lock air-tight without someone doing so from the inside. But he can hear her settle and eventually still within.
"We're the ones who interrupted your stasis. Accident or not, it's the least we could do." Halgrim watches the door shut, checks to see if there's any way to lock or otherwise seal the chamber. He finds a familiar sort of lever for doing sonot unlike on some older models of autoclave he's usedand turns it, giving it a good tug to make sure it's firm.
Once inside, so long as Halgrim follows the instructions that were provided, the machine seems to hum, and the fluid meter reading that she pointed out does seem to begin to climb. There are no alarms, no indications that the machine isn't still working as it was designed before they opened it up. Once the guage reaches full, the machine quietly hums, as it did when they arrived, despite all the goo on the floor which is very slowly evaporating away.