Ismat was noiseless, working on the assumption that she was still as yet within some form of illusion. Or earnestly forcing herself to believe that, at least, desperate to form some sort of mental crutch.
Still, she rapidly scuttled after Ode due to simple provocation. She couldn't quite remember how her feet worked, but the sight of another human being was as good a bait as any.
The unspeakable horror behind them hastily gained new horrendous weight as memories and emotions flooded back into an empty mind.
She wished they hadn't.
Tahira's face was twisted with mental agony. She clutched her head as if to try and shake something out, shake out the wrongness of it. This wasn't happening. It was impossible, the darkness was a mad and fevered dream.
No. The end was real. It was more real than anything.
She walked calmly towards the hold, her mind blank and her face expressionless.
Originally Posted by Fenn
You forgot your F in Modesty.
The party entered the hold and found themselves in the open desert, no sign of the ship in sight.
The sands stretched out before them. It was night, but they could see fairly well due to the sickly green glow of the stars and sky above.
And the stars were off. The constellations - they were wrong. They were all wrong.
The stars were wrong.
In the distance, on the sands, surrounded by a ring of bones and clumps of meat and flesh was the monolith looking exactly as Viktor had described it.
Between the monolith and the party were two long lines of prostrated figures, heads bowed to the sand in deference to the black slab. They resembled humans, and may once have been, but their bodies lacked flesh, bare muscle, dripping with blood, exposed to the scouring winds and sands as they paid homage to the monolith.
The party could feel It. In their heads. It was there. Scratcing and clawing and screaming and roaring to get in. To get in? To get out?
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Ismat made a low growl like a hungry dog, stabbing a wide-eyed look at the monolith with a frenzied air. She didn't blink, just panted, periodically, cautiously, animalistically. Her head twitched and her horn-rings jangled.
The black rock, it was the answer. It could either end the nightmares and prove her disjointed memories correct, or do nothing and legitimize the world madness around her.
Suddenly, she moved like a bolt, scrabbling towards it on all fours. Starving for answers.
The goatish thing grasped it and heaved it upwards from the dirt.
As Ismat grasped the monolith in her hands she found it lighter than it ought to be, as Viktor said, and as he also said, cold to the touch.
What he did not mention was the terrible roar it made in her mind as she touched it.
***
The moment Ismat lifted the monolith, everything went dark for an instant before the party found themselves in the ship's hold, where they should have been. It was a mess, and there was a ring of garbage where the monolith had been, but otherwise it seemed normal. Everything seemed normal again. Was it - was it all a hallucination? Some kind of illusion? A dream?
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Tahira stared at the wall without moving. Her breathing was soft, but came through her mouth rather than her nose. She didn't move, or speak, or make any response. There wasn't a single sign to show she'd recognised anything had changed after they'd entered the hold or after Ismat had seized the monolith; she had been indifferent for the past few minutes, and was indifferent still.
Clearly something was wrong.
You forgot your F in Modesty.
"It's over."
Ismat continued staring into the void-colored slab before her, holding it at arms length and not daring to blink. Her breath continued to cycle frantically for several moments. Wild, thin vapor clouds escaped from her frantically heaving infernal lungs.
"It's over. It was a trap. It's over." The voice was exstatic, on the verge of maniacal laughter, but still far too wild and slurred for it's own good. There was just something disjointed and unhinged, hearing the diminutive teifling's voice without an element of self control or subtle vagary. "It's over. It's over. It's over. Don't go crazy, geeze. It's over, geeze. Stupid shortass sloppy useless slimeheap, it's over."
A sudden burst of movement. She ripped off a lower fragment of her dress' outer skirting and covered the thing up swiftly, then continued to stand there and hold it out like some kind of gift-wrapped present.
"It's over. Don't just stand there like a clout-headed loaf, Tahira." She remarked, through still not breaking eye contacting with her little parcel. "It's over. -It's over-. What... What the hell is wrong with you? Can't you see it was all I trick and it's over? So... So obvious!..."
The tone was still off. As if she was so fervently trying to defend this self-stated truth, that any other option was like a major personal insult. The kind of thing you'd slash someone up for at the drop of a coin.
A grating chuckle escaped her lips, soon followed by a rebounding, high-pitched laugh. She couldn't stop herself. It continued right on shreikingly until her lungs ran out of air, and her failing knees forced her to crouch down onto the filthy decking. Through her eye contact had broken, and her arms shaking with fatigue, still did she hoist the box as far away from her body as possible, in exclusion of all else.
It was getting hard to tell if that incessant laughing was not really sobbing after all.
"It's okay," said Tahira in a quiet monotone. She was staring at the wall, and didn't look at Ismat until the tiefling started cackling.
"What are you doing?" she said in the same detached voice, looking at where Ismat's face had been.
"You're too upset to have that thing. Give it to me."
She knelt down and gazed at Ismat, and slowly extended an open palm.
"Give it to me."
You forgot your F in Modesty.
"...It's... ha... It's not the way of things at all... They just don't work like that... hua... ha... You should at least... half... get that... he...haha... ha..." Ismat responded, softly, her laughter a pained whisper of what it was. She refused to look up. Her hands writhed with fatigue, probably not willing to defend the unholy object, just too terrified to move or jostle it any further. "It was a children's trick and it's over, n-nothing special... Don't be such a coward, Tahira... It's... ha... It's... a stupid rock..."
Tahira leaned in towards Ismat and tried to pull the monolith out of the tiefling's grasp.
"We are fine, Ismat. You are right. It was just a dream. So give it to me."
You forgot your F in Modesty.
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