Neffa a Reyeth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lessthanelementary) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thearena2013-04-07 12:28 am
lessthanelementary) wrote in thearena2013-04-07 12:28 am
Entry tags:
dance, magic, dance~~
Who: Neffa and OPEN
What: Neffa is trying to call up spirits - feel free to run into him either mid-attempt or on the paranoid sprints between them!
Where: Around
When: Week three
Warnings/Notes: None yet! Would be more than up for confrontation, though, so that could well change.
It was a continuing shock to Neffa that he was still alive. When he'd made his desperate bargain from the pedestal (please, Lady, let me buy my life) he'd not expected to have the deal snapped up with quite so much enthusiasm - if the gods really had been listening, he'd obviously caught them at a particularly generous moment.
Alive was really all that could be said for his physical state, though. The last of his five cans was gone, and he hadn't quite got up the guts to cook the only rat he'd caught yet. He'd wrapped it up in the tattered remains of his light green cape - for when he got really hungry, he told himself, as though the decision were a pragmatic one and not just the fact that the idea still made his stomach lurch.
He had little else, except a can lid bent to have one good, sharp edge, the gnawing terror that would not sleep, and the persistent sense that his luck was moments from running out. Luck had always been something he'd made for himself, or bought at excellent premiums from the kinds of spirits willing to dispense it - the kind the gods supposedly handed out, while he didn't mean to seem ungrateful, was altogether too unpredictable for his taste. And, well-- so long as he had a food supply, however small, and so long as his luck from the gods was still following him-- what better time than to try to buy some of his own?
And so, in a lull between panicked encounters, he found a corner with a good outward view, put his bundled-up rat behind him, smoothed out his stained shirt (he usually dressed better for business meetings than this, but the otherworld would just have to understand) and made himself a bargaining circle.
The preparations were, by necessity, simple - he'd made a loop out of a knotted strip of cloth from the hem of his shirt, and this he placed on the bare earth before him, the hacked-off can lid in the center as invitation. He put his back to the wall, exhaled hard, shut his eyes, and began to mutter, almost stumbling over the speech in his haste to get the words out quickly. The spell was the simplest one he knew - the exact words were ones he'd never had cause to use in his professional life, no more specific than Appear and I will bargain, less a spell than a plea. He didn't care. To know he could bargain, that was the most important thing, and he didn't give a damn what showed up in the circle so long as it was willing to sell him that reassurance.
He didn't take long at any one attempt. Every hour or so he'd stagger to his feet, stuff the string circle back into his pocket, and run to the next hiding place, the next landmark, the next tangle of trees-- anywhere that might have had a spirit hovering around it, waiting to be called into service.
They have to be here. Run, summon, run, summon, swallow growing desperation, summon, run. A city without spirits, that was possible, sure, but a world without them could not exist. They are here. Somewhere. The next place. The next.
What: Neffa is trying to call up spirits - feel free to run into him either mid-attempt or on the paranoid sprints between them!
Where: Around
When: Week three
Warnings/Notes: None yet! Would be more than up for confrontation, though, so that could well change.
It was a continuing shock to Neffa that he was still alive. When he'd made his desperate bargain from the pedestal (please, Lady, let me buy my life) he'd not expected to have the deal snapped up with quite so much enthusiasm - if the gods really had been listening, he'd obviously caught them at a particularly generous moment.
Alive was really all that could be said for his physical state, though. The last of his five cans was gone, and he hadn't quite got up the guts to cook the only rat he'd caught yet. He'd wrapped it up in the tattered remains of his light green cape - for when he got really hungry, he told himself, as though the decision were a pragmatic one and not just the fact that the idea still made his stomach lurch.
He had little else, except a can lid bent to have one good, sharp edge, the gnawing terror that would not sleep, and the persistent sense that his luck was moments from running out. Luck had always been something he'd made for himself, or bought at excellent premiums from the kinds of spirits willing to dispense it - the kind the gods supposedly handed out, while he didn't mean to seem ungrateful, was altogether too unpredictable for his taste. And, well-- so long as he had a food supply, however small, and so long as his luck from the gods was still following him-- what better time than to try to buy some of his own?
And so, in a lull between panicked encounters, he found a corner with a good outward view, put his bundled-up rat behind him, smoothed out his stained shirt (he usually dressed better for business meetings than this, but the otherworld would just have to understand) and made himself a bargaining circle.
The preparations were, by necessity, simple - he'd made a loop out of a knotted strip of cloth from the hem of his shirt, and this he placed on the bare earth before him, the hacked-off can lid in the center as invitation. He put his back to the wall, exhaled hard, shut his eyes, and began to mutter, almost stumbling over the speech in his haste to get the words out quickly. The spell was the simplest one he knew - the exact words were ones he'd never had cause to use in his professional life, no more specific than Appear and I will bargain, less a spell than a plea. He didn't care. To know he could bargain, that was the most important thing, and he didn't give a damn what showed up in the circle so long as it was willing to sell him that reassurance.
He didn't take long at any one attempt. Every hour or so he'd stagger to his feet, stuff the string circle back into his pocket, and run to the next hiding place, the next landmark, the next tangle of trees-- anywhere that might have had a spirit hovering around it, waiting to be called into service.
They have to be here. Run, summon, run, summon, swallow growing desperation, summon, run. A city without spirits, that was possible, sure, but a world without them could not exist. They are here. Somewhere. The next place. The next.
no subject
R wasn't worried he got turned around. It happened. You'd be a crappy corpse if you panicked every single time you got lost or stuck shuffling into a wall every now and then. Either he got plain lost or he just hazed out, drifted in his mind and hey, uh, suddenly he was lost and it was up to him to stumble back home. Or not. There was always staggering around until he bumped into another zombie pack but he couldn't cheat with that plan now. Not enough zombies here, for starters.
Not unless Air or Karis were busy infecting people. Air didn't seem like that kinda corpse, but Karis. All bets were off with someone like Karis.
R tried not to think about it too much. What he wanted to do was get un-turned around and work from there.
The muttering was quiet. He paused, head tilted to the side. It sounded like one voice, a guy's, and it was dark enough that R couldn't see that far ahead but he could make a guess that the guy was alone. Alone and talking to himself. Great signs there. R was already shuffling toward the sound before he had any ideas about what he wanted to do: did he want to ask for directions or sneak in a bite behind Howard's back?
"Guugghh," R grunted as he burst in on the guy, one arm raised. "...Help me...with...?"
He told himself he was trying to wave, not make any passes at the Tribute. Kinda hard to get directions back to Thunder Mountain if he killed the guy, right?
no subject
He'd holed up with his back against a stone that didn't quite have the texture of real rock, hoping that the nearby clanking of the canal might drown him out, at least from a distance. He'd ducked his head, put his rat between his feet, and begun muttering furiously, and this had worked out well enough until R walked in on him.
I hear... The shuffling sound, not quite footsteps, which world was it coming from? There were earth spirits that walked like that, and hope rose in Neffa's chest as he reached with every sense for it, whispered more fiercely the words that would snare it, called to it with every sense and finally opened his eyes to--
The sound Neffa made was almost "No--!", but garbled by the end of the word before it and more than half an involuntary shout of terror. He lurched to his feet, snatching at the can lid on his way up, planting his back flat against the rock and slashing at the air between himself and the-- person?-- the-- what--
"Stay back!" he managed to blurt, in a proper human language this time. Gods, was that a-- he looked almost dead, or plagued, or something. Not carrying a weapon, at least, but that didn't mean his intentions were benign. "I-- What do you want?" Please, what can I give you, what can I sell you in exchange for my life?
...Not the most eloquent beginning to a potentially lifesaving transaction he could have picked, perhaps, but to the point, at least.
no subject
R slouches where he’s stopped in his tracks, listing to the side like a boat about to overturn in slow mo, his working eye fixed on the other Tribute. The other one points off in a different direction, dusty and scratched.
“…Dirrrrr….” R trails off, frustrated. Multi-syllable words totally aren’t his thing, but he keeps trucking anyway because he’s stubborn like that. He’ll get it out one way or another. “Dirre…ctions. I’m…lost.”
There he goes. It’s not all in one chunk but it’s there. R eyeballs the other Tribute, takes in the shock of hair, the darker skin like Howard. He doesn’t recognize him but when you’re a corpse, that doesn’t mean much, so R mentally shrugs. Does he want to ask what the muttering was about?
no subject
He isn't entirely sure what lost means in this context. So far as he knows, there's absolutely nowhere it's possible to go except the arena, which, being only large enough to contain eighty people and all their fear and anger, doesn't seem to him terribly easy to get lost in. And he can't think of a reason that someone would ask a stranger for directions back to their own hiding place. He casts a glance around, in case this is some cockeyed attempt at distraction, but they're clearly alone.
Stop staring and say something. He doesn't know how dangerous this person is or isn't, but he hasn't been attacked yet, and that's... if not a cause for hope, at least a moment to regroup he hadn't been expecting. He plants his feet a little more firmly, takes the plea out of his voice.
"What are you trying to find?" He speaks a little louder than his nerves wish he would, a little more slowly. Longer observation makes him wonder what this guy could possibly have run afoul of - a particularly nasty blow to the head might have put that slur in his speech, Neffa supposes, and put him that off-balance, but there's something unnerving about that off-focus stare all the same. "Are-- are you injured?"
no subject
"Who...isn't?" R blurted. He realized that wasn't the best foot to start on, wracking his shriveled brain for something else to say. "Sorry," he added with a rasp. "Trying...to find...way back to...red..."
He trailed off, searching for the word. It comes to him almost grudgingly.
"Red...moun-tain," R finished.
R decided to take a step closer, one foot sliding closer into the light, the zombie trying to look friendly and failing miserably because all he could manage was a dead idiot’s gape. He made the extra effort to snap his mouth shut, his teeth clicking. R could feel the Tribute sizing him up. It was a natural reaction because hi, corpse here who’d barged right in the middle of…whatever the guy was doing. R’s eye drifted down to the collection of stuff, passing over the can lid, the looped piece of shirt, and for the life of him he couldn’t figure out what it was for.
no subject
He saw where the stranger's gaze was going and broke the circle with a nudge of his foot, almost defensively. (What gives you the right to find anything about me strange?) The problem, he thought, was that he couldn't read this one - the slack-jawed expression didn't communicate hostility, but it didn't communicate much else either, and that was almost more unsettling to Neffa than the fact that he looked more dead than alive.
He needs something. That's a start. What better start could you have asked for? It was time bought, anyway, now that he'd spent almost as long answering as the stranger had. "You're not far out of your way," he said finally. Unless there was more than one hulking, man-made wreck of a mountain in this place, he was sure he'd spent time crouched near it not more than a a few hours ago. "What do you hope to find there? Shelter?" If there was something worth following him for...
no subject
Honestly, it sounded a lot better in his head most of the time.
He wasn't sure if this human would help him. R could tell he was making him nervous and the longer he stood here, half-falling apart in the dim light, the more he was convinced that maybe this was a lost cause. He watched as the guy toed at the collection of Stuff, as if maybe he was afraid R would lurch in and help himself and maybe that was closer to the truth if they weren't in the Arena.
He realized with relief he'd judged the guy wrong. Despite the way he was looking at him, he was still giving a dead boy directions.
"I have...friends there. I'm...hhh...helping them," R said. "Being a...better friend, do you...under...stand?"
Maybe he better ask if he could lead the way. That'd save R a lot of wandering time if all he had to do was follow the Living man, provided he didn't spook on him. R sniffed despite himself, his nostrils flaring, his lips parting. Christ, he smelled good: the fact he probably hadn't bathed since entering the Arena didn't stop R from picking up that Living scent peeking through.
no subject
That seemed to him a risk worth taking.
"...I understand," he said. "Tell me-- would your friends be glad of it, if I helped you help them?"
no subject
"I...think so. But How...ward...wants his...space," R had to go and blurt out the truth because he was that kind of corpse. Lying takes too long and he doesn't have the words to keep it up. "Trying to be...friend to...them. Help...them. It's a...work in prog...ghhh..."
R shrugged and gave up groaning on that note. Maybe not the answer this Tribute wanted.
"Can't hurt...to try," R cranked out an encouraging smile, baring his teeth.