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No. 190539
One-thread story, aiming for multiple updates a day, as fast as I can manage until we finish.
Good? Good.
*****
Let there be life.
Agonizingly, astonishingly alive.
Your first breath rattles for eternity; heart seizing in a tight ball of agony - then you cough it out as it catches and runs.
Your breath, that is, not your heart - scarce though the difference feels. Your body is one cold cramp; dead flesh frozen through the marrow. Sluggish blood churns through stiff veins; pins and needles of painful heat penetrating your limbs.
Your second breath leaves as a whimper, and the third, a wail - too weak to reach help. Tears leak down your cheeks as your body strains for existence. You move without meaning to and pain pierces you clean through, punching a hole in your mind that your meager thoughts swirl down into. Only the echoing scream remains, one shrill shrieking note you've not the breath to voice.
And then it fades, leaving you curled in a ball in the dirt; heart hurting, head hammering, ankle aching and your dry tongue bleeding into your mouth. Rasping hoarsely, you pry open weeping eyes to see -
- nothing.
Blinking away the blur of tears reveals a world of looming shadows; soft silver light filtering through bare skeletal branches clutching 'cross the sky. The wind stirs in the trees and slices thinly through you, sending fresh shivers through your aching limbs. You swallow a mouthful of blood around your swollen tongue and stagger upright, hands slipping up the moss-slick bark of a nearby tree for support. You spread your feet for better stance - and feel the sharp, blinding agony in your left ankle as weight lands on it. Slumping against the tree, you almost shriek - but strangle it to a miserable sob. Your laboring heart leaps and stutters at even that sound. Clinging to the tree, grinding your teeth together, you strain for -
- safety.
Safety in the silence.
That solitary thought chimes sweetly in your mind, a dulcet tone that raises a complementary, cascading cacophony - like a wind chime singing in the breeze. You cling to the solid, rough bark of your tree as the individual notes float upward to pop into your mind.
Safety in numbers.
That number is five.
Tyger, tyger burning bright
in the forests of the night
That last one sounds sour despite the rhyme - in your gut, a sympathetic queasiness you loathe. But now it's there and it's there to stay, Tyger Tyger Burning Bright, here in the forest of the night.
Now you turn to lean against the tree, scanning the dark, and it is ever so dark and deep - but not lovely and no miles to go with no promises to keep, just that slick hot fear you feel melting your muscles as you scan and scan and scan, studying shadows - the craggy blobs of bushes, the crooked climbing lines of saplings - seeking the sleek, sharp silhouette of danger.
The fearful symmetry.
[ ] Light. The flashlight. You just can't see in the dark no matter how you try - you need that light. And a flare would draw attention from miles awa-
[ ] Flare...? A flare, you - you have a flare. Yes. That'll light everything without pinpointing you. It won't last, but you only need to check. For bearings.
[ ] Nothing can see far in a dark forest - not even tigers. Injured as you are, you've got to make what distance you can under cover of darkness. Distance towards... towards anything. But mostly away from here.
[ ] Nothing can see far in a dark forest - not even tigers. Injured as you are, you've got to make what distance you can under cover of darkness. Distance towards... towards anything. But mostly away from here.
[X] Nothing can see far in a dark forest - not even tigers. Injured as you are, you've got to make what distance you can under cover of darkness. Distance towards... towards anything. But mostly away from here
[X] Nothing can see far in a dark forest - not even tigers. Injured as you are, you've got to make what distance you can under cover of darkness. Distance towards... towards anything. But mostly away from here.
[X] Nothing can see far in a dark forest - not even tigers. Injured as you are, you've got to make what distance you can under cover of darkness. Distance towards... towards anything. But mostly away from here.
I'm liking this. The prose fits with who I imagine this to be, without being too purple for me.
I'm also interested to see how the format works, and what you make of it.
[X] Nothing can see far in a dark forest - not even tigers. Injured as you are, you've got to make what distance you can under cover of darkness. Distance towards... towards anything. But mostly away from here.
[X] Nothing can see far in a dark forest - not even tigers. Injured as you are, you've got to make what distance you can under cover of darkness. Distance towards... towards anything. But mostly away from here.
[X] Nothing can see far in a dark forest - not even tigers. Injured as you are, you've got to make what distance you can under cover of darkness. Distance towards... towards anything. But mostly away from here.
That quavers within you, a sustained note of alarm. Alone is the antithesis, the dreaded enemy of life.
Alone is the elk split from the herd by the circling wolves.
Alone is the straggler behind the herd, waiting for the hawks to dive.
Alone is to stand fast when others move - without you.
Stand still and suffer the slings and arrows of every sonofabitch with a bow. Empty your quiver and then you quiver behind your battlements as they bring up the catapults. Every man's a mortal and every ticker's a timer and yours is running up a debt, judging by the dull thudding pain in your chest.
You have to mobilize, and now.
The Forest begrudges your passage, gnarled roots clutching at your dragging toe and snagging your faded clothes. It's a dense thicket of decomposition; teeming with moss and mushroom and rotting leaves squelching underfoot. You know this place, or its like - the worst kind of place, the wet wild depth between the mountains where the most ancient forests grow, resenting man as the mayfly interloper he is. Such forests drank the blood of mammoth and mastadon, of Vandal and Visigoth and Roman Legionaries by the countless thousands. Invader and defender hath borne their eagle banners into the darkness beneath these clawed canopies and vanished; vanquished in their final, terrible stand.
You creep o'er the corpses countless, mouldering beneath a shroud of rotting leaves - and you can smell them fine; the earthy scent of a forest floor mingled with the sickening-sweet stench of the Frigidare unplugged for a week; years of leaks and losses mouldering into a fine filthy film on the pristine. The gnarled trunks stand thick enough to thwart a clear shot and bar easy passage but not enough to cover from searching eyes; the brush and shifting shades thrown by the skeletal canopy caging the meager moonlight mask the contours of earth; the sheltered lanes and dips where danger dwells and the rising ridge-lines which might become hostile ramparts - or redoubts with hostile reception. You probe them all with piercing eyes, locking your gaze on each silhouette and shadow while a thousand more scream for attention, seeming to leap and cavort till you meet them dead-on. Your heart's with you in your head; pulse pounding against your temple and filling your mouth again and again with blood too salty to quench the rasping thirst.
Pausing at every precipice, a thousand horrible possibilities lurking in the dark beyond your ken, you long to find a depression and bunker down, secure in knowledge of your slender advantage.
You press on.
Sweeping steppes and wide-open wastelands are the graveyards of empires for reasons no more mysterious than the affinity of the boxing-ring mat for fallen champions; it's the only arenas large enough for colossi to ball their strength as one fist and swing it. But in here, in the thick twisted dark of the ancient wood, there's but space for one and one and one and one 'twist every branch and buttressed root, and every battle's one brief flash of blades.
Alone is a man in a forest.
The snap of a twig somewhere behind screams through your veins and fires the blood, that pounding pulse in your tempo your beat to arms. You swivel towards the noise and study the ground, eyes darting dangerously fast; you've got to focus, to stare, to await the betraying motion creeping up in the corners of your sight. Just turn the blind side to the stalking slithering thing, that's the ticket simply providing you don't fucking SCREAM-
Alone, is to be you.
>In moments, you will have to fight.
>What manner of combatant are you?
[ ] The seeker, the scout, the swift-runner. Speed is your watchword; but your wrath lacks naught - drive like a car and hit like a truck.
[ ] The Jeep, the JOAT, the Joe Louis. Perfectly balanced power, never caught out insufficient or out of place; always ready to counter with a cross to the jaw. You maneuver like the wind and fall upon the enemy like a thunderbolt.
[ ] The bastion, the boar, the battering ram. First in, and last out. The indomitable body and unstoppable will that strides where weaker dare not tread. The definition of unstoppable force on attack and immovable object on defense.
Important Note: These choices are all style, not strategy. Give no thought to the situation or the specifics of spellcards in Gensokyo - choose based on your personal preference. They'll all work - this is your chance to shape... well, your self as you see fit.
[X] The Jeep, the JOAT, the Joe Louis. Perfectly balanced power, never caught out insufficient or out of place; always ready to counter with a cross to the jaw. You maneuver like the wind and fall upon the enemy like a thunderbolt.
[x] The Jeep, the JOAT, the Joe Louis. Perfectly balanced power, never caught out insufficient or out of place; always ready to counter with a cross to the jaw. You maneuver like the wind and fall upon the enemy like a thunderbolt.
[X] The Jeep, the JOAT, the Joe Louis. Perfectly balanced power, never caught out insufficient or out of place; always ready to counter with a cross to the jaw. You maneuver like the wind and fall upon the enemy like a thunderbolt.
>>190556 [x] The bastion, the boar, the battering ram. First in, and last out. The indomitable body and unstoppable will that strides where weaker dare not tread. The definition of unstoppable force on attack and immovable object on defense.
You're very poetic and prose-y, yet not quite all the way up your own ass with it.
I think I'm pretty cool with this. Keep writing, I'm looking forward to more.
[x] The Jeep, the JOAT, the Joe Louis. Perfectly balanced power, never caught out insufficient or out of place; always ready to counter with a cross to the jaw. You maneuver like the wind and fall upon the enemy like a thunderbolt.
[X] The Jeep, the JOAT, the Joe Louis. Perfectly balanced power, never caught out insufficient or out of place; always ready to counter with a cross to the jaw. You maneuver like the wind and fall upon the enemy like a thunderbolt.
[x] The bastion, the boar, the battering ram. First in, and last out. The indomitable body and unstoppable will that strides where weaker dare not tread. The definition of unstoppable force on attack and immovable object on defense.
Whirling up from the ground in a shower of dark detritus comes the cyclonic flurry of fireflies; motes of luminous green light swarming 'round and out as their orbits expand, elongate and break into a barrage -
- the stock slams your shoulder, thundering report mingling with the sibilant beehive buzz as ball-bearings tear through the air. Lightmotes explode in bright green flashes trailed by ruby splashes of molten steel as you dive for cover, turquoise bolts crackling the air 'round your ears as thrumming balls find tree trunks with solid thumps somewhere downrange. As the first smoking brass shell falls free of the breech you suck a tardy breath and the scream rips free at last, hot and raw.
Come the cyclone again, wind wailing as its whipped up by hundreds of yellowgreen moths, their lambent luminance organic and fey. You lunge upwards, rotten logs and punky earth exploding away as your heart surges strong, blood pressure spiking till you feel taught, pressurized, tightly together. The slamming thud of gun against shoulder, the burn of straining muscles and pounding heart feel familiar and fine, instincts etched in your bones. But there's still the terror in the dark, rising now before ripping through the twisted tangled dark in a swarm of wild weaving wasps, all of them seeking your heart. Cannon's thunder makes reply, hissing buzzing ball-bearings biting at a half-acre and everything within; but still the sizzling green bastards come, blazing incandescent as they explode on everything around, battering you with concussion and wooden splinters. Your reload is sure and swift as you backpedal quick, seeking shelter - but another barrage of luminous bolts are already falling upon you like hail, driving you further and further back. Yet to see your foeman, yet to loose an aimed shot, you want to flee - but the hot agony in your ankle cripples your fleeting hopes.
With terror thrilling through your veins and twisting your guts you fall back, turning on your heel towards the swirling swarm as it slips sideways, trying to flank you. You step back and find nothing but slippery leaves on a slope - and then your heart's left hanging in air as the bottom drops out of your chest, a hollow shriek grasping for purchase as you fall. Impact slams up your spine as you land on your ass; limbs rattling with arrested inertia but no worse for wear. Feeling out blindly you find the sides of a shallow wash, a sheltered lane of retreat that might guide you away from here. Dragging your bum heel, you back down it as best you can, feeling the itch of a thousand gunsights trailing down your back.
But there comes the green cyclone wreathed in the black dead detritus whipped up by its own witch-wind, circling around to enfilade your escape route. You freeze and cower, shivering as you try to silence the wild careening of your heart.
Maybe it can't see you.
It pauses there, as contemplative as cyclonic carnage can manage. Somewhere in the whirlwind of luminescent bolts something astir catches your eye...
... the rippling hem of a cape, swirling around the ankles of a silhouette so clad.
[ ] Anger now rules you - you, wounded, abandoned, offering no offense and receiving violence without even the courtesy of formal challenge.
[ ] Woe now rules you - you, lost in the dark in a place familiar in general but alien in particulars, you, not knowing your assailant, your circumstances... or even your name.
[X] Woe now rules you - you, lost in the dark in a place familiar in general but alien in particulars, you, not knowing your assailant, your circumstances... or even your name.
[X] Woe now rules you - you, lost in the dark in a place familiar in general but alien in particulars, you, not knowing your assailant, your circumstances... or even your name.
[X] Woe now rules you - you, lost in the dark in a place familiar in general but alien in particulars, you, not knowing your assailant, your circumstances... or even your name.
>>190610 Here's your tiebreaker, buttmuncher.
You owe me a lewd scene for this story!
As the swirling mass of ephemeral locusts begins advancing down the dry wash, you finally find time to wonder what brought this beast down upon you. What offense fostered such hatred? Why does it harry you to ground only to sniff you out like a hound? Slithering back on your belly, you press yourself behind a slight rise in the earth, shivering as the cold ground leeches your body heat. With shaking fingers you fumble a fresh shell from your bandoleer strap and slide it slowly home, easing the lever up to close the breech block without a click. Bedding down behind it, you cinch the stock tight to your shoulder and touch the trigger gently, taking up the short travel to tremble on the precipice of breaking. You let yourself fall through the dark circle of the sights, waiting for another glimpse of the swirling cape; a brief silhouette. As the swarm swells and swells in your sights, your heart's wild hammering louder and louder in your skull, it occurs to you that nobody will know your name.
There is something missing in you, that others have - a cold tinkle against your chest, a thin chain 'round your neck. Names. You had some but not one, not a name, not a real, solid, name. Nothing for the graven marker. No memory to memorialize. Just your body, hollow and empty, standing silent sentinel for eternity wherever you died, stopped in your tracks. No tears needed for a transient existence, an unnamed vessel.
The toil and terror will be over soon.
The shivering subsides as you loose your grasp on life; letting the heat of your blood seep into the ground. You settle behind your weapon like a stone, resigned to your fate - here you stand, for an hour or for eternity is out of your hands.
There is nothing to do but wait.
As the silhouette with the swirling cape draws ever closer.
As the shadows resolve into a slender body with antenna sticking up from the bonnet.
As the eerie twilight eyes begin to glint in the gathering darkness, their dull amber glow flicking to and fro, to and fro till they fix on you with what feels like a physical -
- blow.
The recoil, of course, still ringing in your ears. A fading single note bridging your minds as you gaze into each others eyes; shocked and searching...
... until she looks down, almost curiously, at the neat, clean hole in her chest. She lifts a hand but never reaches it, her mouth opening to loose a surprised cry she's no air to voice as her knees give out. The swirling green furies disperse in a flurry, flitting away in every direction to vanish into the tangled twisted tree-trunks.
It's over.
Just like that, it's over.
You curl up around the hot ache in your ankle, and with nobody around to witness it, you weep.
[ ] Wait for morning, when you can at least see what's coming for you. What else is there to do?
[ ] Drag yourself down this dry wash - it's a direction at least, and it'll shield you from prying eyes.
[ ] Call for help. There has to be someone... anyone... anywhere. You can't take this, not another second.
Sunken lanes slice both ways, as your fallen foeman learned - lethal funnel or sheltered lane varies with your advantage. But when the lambent moonbeams take their final leave, the dry wash offers neither danger nor defense - but simply direction. Feeling your way along its steep, stone-stubbled sides, you guide yourself forward in the dark - always downhill.
Follow the wash, and find the water. Follow the water, and find the womb from which civilization springs. Follow this, and you find something, anything which isn't this dark and hungry wood teeming with decay and danger and death.
Blind, you grope ever onward, useless left foot dragging behind. Alone in the dark, isolated and apart, you imagine yourself stumbling through space, a vast void with you the sole occupant. The sole sounds are those of your self. Gentle chaotic chiming once again winding, thoughts tumbling unmitigated through your mind. It might be underbrush acrackle underfoot but you see the dancing flames before you, memory manifesting unbidden.
Tyrant, titan, the Teuton's targe-
Flames flicker and writhe like dervishes winding their trance around some dark object within, hulking and horrible...
in the tangled thickets of Teutoburg he took root
- the apparition blazes bright, the dark silhouette lurking within a firestorm littered by the small slumped shapes, looking like slain birds -
at the meeting of the rivers, we met
- now the shade swells, firelight shimmering along sleek obsidian sides. It looms large before you, threatening to swallow you whole and the darkness complete.
the final clash in the cold, as we crept between bare trees as snow fell thick and silent. Closer and closer we twirled, tracks leading inevitably together.
- sinuous streamers of flame slide over the obsidian; their reflections rising from deep within the stone to touch their source... and merge.
From the foot of his glacis you slung your tungsten stone
Tendrils of flame flicker outwards from the silhouette as it blazes alight itself, its dark carapace beginning to glow cherry-red as the flames take.
tablette breathing flame before his heart flares alight,
Fire-tongues lick up the slick obsidian sides, striping the silhouette.
in the forest of the night.
A splash of something soaks your good foot through sole and sock; the shiver scattering the mirage to the abyss whence it came. You shrink against the bank, pulling your foot from the flowing water you can't see, and huddle into a hollow, roots pressing against your back.
The darkness reaches out to swallow you, but as you fall a final forlorn thought flits through your mind -
You're awake alert and atremble all at once, empty stomach twisting round and round as you try not to breathe. You're burrowed behind bobbing cat-tails growing between you and the river, but you can hear the shallow water burbling over stones.
And the next splash.
You thumb back the hammer and fumble in a fresh shell - then clutch the rifle close across your breast, wary of waving cat-tails beckoning some new hell. Sunlight - soft, bright sunlight - shines through the vegetation shadowing your riverbank retreat. The smell of swift water over smooth stones, of an open space where wind can blow strong and clean - it's all there, within reach, tantalizing your fingertips...
... but for the splash.
The chilly earthen bank clutches at your back, accentuating the aches and pains of the nightmares and nocturnal battles (not that the divisions were terribly distinct.) The dark demesnes of the putrid wood claw at your consciousness, tendrils slick with ichorous ick-
- an earthworm squirms out of the bank and onto your nape and that settles the matter most definitively. Dead foot a-dragging, you crash through the cat-tails and swing your barrel to bear on -
Beauty.
Slanting sunbeams dapple her figure; shade lurking on the rich red of her dress and sunlight lingering on pale, slender arms. Her flawless face seems to flare with light as she looks at you, wreathed by the verdant green tresses of her flowing hair. But its the eyes that draw you down; solemn and sad, and in their depths all your senses drown...
... till they widen in surprise, shattering the split-second of shock that seemed to stretch into eternity. She jerks back with sudden gasp, pale arms windmilling wildly for a moment before she tumbles backwards and lands on her rump in the shallow water, staring at you in shock.
You stand there thunderstruck, every fiber of your being straining between twin impulses, to -
Sodden dress clinging to her slender legs, bare arms propping herself against the smooth submerged stones, she stares back.
Something splashes and clatters at your feet; insignificant, already forgotten. She shifts, sitting up straight - wet fabric sliding across the curves of her calves before rising like a veil, floating as her legs submerge. Water laps at her small waist, cross-laced corset ceding to the gentle swell of her bosom; soon concealed beneath wide white lapels pulled down demurely by taut leather laces. Verdant green locks, unbraided and unbound spill over the white cloth, and concealing her cleavage, over her heart, they meet behind a large velvet ribbon tied in a bow. Her eyes are magnetizing, pulling your gaze inevitably upwards even as you shiver and shy away for no reason you can name -
- and feel your thoughts scatter again as her expression hits you full-force; emerald eyes wounded and reproachful, guarded by a small mouth frowning with defensive disdain.
“Seen enough?” she says lowly, the quiver of her lip twisting something in your chest. You stumble back a step, a sense of transgression stealing over you for you've never ever known anything like this. Stepped from your rightful domain to desecrate hers, that hurt your own doing, but -
- this heat in your head and heart and skin. Not scalding fire stroked from a stalwart soul by a hammering heartbeat - but warmth from within, soaking through you like sunlight, hot enough to burn you away but gentle as caresses the entire while. Her wounded eyes deepen and you stumble, landing in the river reeds with a thump you barely feel. Damned and excommunicate you are, and to your demesnes you ought return but you can't, can't can't walk back into the dark where death is dealt and even the aces draw dead men's hands in their own time.
You haven't seen enough and though you hate yourself so much in this moment you could
keep
staring.
And her eyes soften,, quizzical... concerned. Tucking her legs to one side, she shifts onto her knees, hands gathered in her lap gracefully. Her frilled hem sinks to the stones as trapped air seeps away, pulling her dress tighter over trim thighs. Arms straight, hands gathered gracefully in her lap, she studies you. A lace-trimmed ribbon wraps 'round and 'round one wrist like a cuff; so slender she is it sits loosely 'pon her forearm. It strikes you that her clothes exist to make decent her delicacy; shield her sweet grace from oafish eyes - and now soaked, she sits revealed, vulnerable.
“Are you okay?” she asks apprehensively.
You open your mouth and a dry tongue not your own croaks unintelligible reply, for you are not okay, not atall.
“What's your name?”
Names names names whirl through your head, a sea and a march and a man (to it but you remember from or did you mix the waters, sea and river, the two rivers where they meet is where you met no no no “NO!”
She starts, ever so slightly. “You can't tell me?”
But oh how you want to, if only you knew! But only numbers damned numbers a serial number no several of those but which one and why? Five was the first one you recall, five comrades - or was it souls, five souls? Same, or separate you don't know you can't know and now she, she wants to and you want so badly what she wants but you just don't fucking know!
She blurs before you, shimmering and streaking and at last you huddle around your shame as the agony crashes over you like a cresting wave, crushing and rolling and pounding you too deep to remember the surface. For memory it is, your last reserves of strength and pretense of mission swept away and now there's only the costs of combat adding up fast, every joint aching as if ill-used, ankle screaming as if shattered and you huddling, shivering, shaking - spent.
[ ] It hurts. It hurts so damn much, it hurts- [ ] I'm something horrible and horror is all I know, I'll hurt you, I'll hurt you so don't -!
[ ] ... I know my name. (Write-in only.)
>>190998 > [ ] ... I know my name. (Write-in only.)
The protagonist referred obliquely, and possibly metonymically, to a battle in the Teutoberg Forest. Given the references to the names "Frigidaire" (1919-present) and "Joe Louis" (active 1932-1951), this suggests the protagonist fought in World War II, in Germany, on the Allied side; and that they were specifically a Yank. (Use of the term "flashlight", rather than "[electric] torch", supports this.)
More to the point, while glacis has a meaning in fixed fortifications, it's also the front hull of a tank. The usual US anti-tank weaponry in the Western Front was the M1, a 57mm anti-tank gun, which commonly used tungsten ammunition.
So we're probably looking either at a US soldier who operated an M1, or the tsukumogami of an M1. I suspect it's the second—and that, had we voted differently for our style, we might have been a tank or a... well, whatever the speedy option would have been.
>>191024 Well, for one thing, because I'm not sure.
For another, I am sure it's not the M1 Garand. It's also not the M1 carbine, the M1 Thompson carbine, the M1 mortar, the M1 helmet, the M1 flamethrower, the M1 chemical mine, the 90mm M1 anti-aircraft and anti-tank gun, or the 120mm M1 super-heavy anti-aircraft gun.
It's the 57mm anti-tank gun.
(All of those M1s were used by the US in WWII, incidentally.)
No. 190539
