Holes/Session 38
A fragment of the Garden of Remembering
< Holes
INT. Cave cavern thing
The fighting continues.
The shadow Radek throws a healing infusion at the shadow Amadi along with some protective magics, including thundering armour in an attempt to push the Gravedigger away. It doesn't work. (rolled 16 vs fortitude)
Greibel's bong is off. It feels a little funny in his hands, though he's not entirely sure how or why. Regardless, he summons a fire hawk on the shadow Amadi, blasting it with flame. (rolled 27 vs reflex (natural 20)) The hawk swoops around, waiting, as the eyebot lasers her.
He refills his bong with a yellow and luminous substance that appears gooey and slightly hairy and takes a large hit.
GREIBEL
WHOOOOOO! HOLES IN THE UNIVERSE!
Greibel coughs for about thirty seconds.
On the floor, Amadi seems almost to blur. To Greibel, she seems to be glowing.
Radek tosses her an infusion and she stirs, but the blurriness remains. Fuzzy. Like she's just out of focus.
Then he summons another robot and retreats around the corner, out of the sight of all the people with the capacity to kill him.
Ganelon (Radek): At this point Radek can have a seat, pull up his portable computer, and just patch straight into the Eyebot feed. It's like playing a video game where your player character is a fire-spitting robot and your camera shoots deadly lasers.
Bear Soup Guy (Greibel): I have a very important question. Is Shadow Greibel smoking a shadow bong?
Greibel looks for a bong on his shadowy copy, but it doesn't seem to have any. (rolled 28 perception) It doesn't even seem to be smoking anything at all, but at the same time, the entire shadow Greibel has the same sort of essence as the bong. It's like he is smoking stuff, just without the stuff, and without actually using anything to do it. Or actually smoking.
Bear Soup Guy (Greibel): He's infused with the essence of drugs. Greibel is jealous.
The shadow Greibel steps back behind the real Amadi and uses this pure druggy darkness to summon faerie fire around Radek's robot, catching the Gravedigger and Amadi in the blast.
Amadi, the Gravedigger and the robot all catch fire, but the fire is wrong, off-colour and dark, and gleaming. Amadi's fire goes out almost immediately, and then nothing really happens to any of them.
Ganelon (Radek): Since I can't put icons on my drawings, the robot is now on fire. If you'd prefer a more faerie-coloured fire, go ahead and suggest one.
Ellemerr (Amadi): GREEN
Apheori (GM): GREEN.
Ellemerr (Amadi): AND PURPLE
Apheori (GM): AND GREEN.
Frezak (Gravy): AND PURPLE
Apheori (GM): WITH SOME BLUE.
Frezak (Gravy): AND GREEN
Apheori (GM): AND PURPLE.
Ellemerr (Amadi): MAYBE SPECKS OF GOLD
Frezak (Gravy): AND PURPLE
Apheori (GM): YES.
Ganelon (Radek): Wow, you three.
The shadow Amadi grins viciously at the other Amadi, revealing teeth. Lots of teeth. Gleaming, coming for her. Then the shadow takes a step away from the Gravedigger and gets a faceful of shovel and a lasering, and hisses something horrible. (rolled 16 vs will)
SHADOW AMADI
(silently)
I want it DEAD.
Of those entirely alive, only Amadi and Greibel hear this. Greibel looks visibly shaken.
AMADI
(echoing the shadow)
Dead.
The shadow Rhu leaps up and swears an oath of enmity on Amadi in horrible silence. No words seem to entirely be present, but something is. Something is there.
RHU
(to the shadow Rhu)
Say what?
The shadow Rhu ignores him and brings down a flash of strange black light on Amadi. (rolled 16 vs AC) She falls once more, blurring, folding up like silk.
Rhu bashes his shadow with his maul and kills it. This one, too, dissolves into a puddle that begins to recede into the cavern floor, but Rhu is already stepping over it to rejoin the rest of the fray at the centre of the cavern.
The Gravedigger, meanwhile, punts Radek's robot away toward the shadow George and shadow Radek (rolled 22 athletics), before turning back and scooting up to the nearer shadows an bringing his shovel down at the shadow Greibel and shadow Amadi with the force of stone. (rolled 14, 18 vs AC)
THE GRAVEDIGGER
GET OFF MY FRUIT.
The shadow Amadi is crushed under the weight of the assault, and after a strange pause, it and the other remaining shadows all suddenly dissolve into sludge. Another moment, and the sludge begins to flow, not down into the floor like before, but now all toward Amadi, from all parts of the cavern, flowing into her.
The Gravedigger grabs Amadi out of this and runs up to Radek with her in his arms. As he does, trails of sludge hang down, pulling into the floor, sticky and strong.
THE GRAVEDIGGER
Fixitfixitfixit.
The sludge follows and continues flowing into her, until there's none left outside of a few isolated bits caught on various rocks.
THE GRAVEDIGGER
Please?
RADEK
Exactly which problem do you want me to fix!?
THE GRAVEDIGGER
The lying dead like a ragdoll one?
GEORGE
So not the one in which she just absorbed all the... whatever that was? Do we even know what that was?
THE GRAVEDIGGER
Eh, that weirdness happens all the time.
RADEK
(injecting Amadi with a healing infusion)
If that substance does anything close to what I imagine, this will be next to useless.
THE GRAVEDIGGER
Well, I appreciate you helping.
It doesn't help.
The Gravedigger goes and tosses Amadi into the pool of water at the other side of the room instead. This doesn't help either, so he just pulls her out again.
Radek follows, but then notices a few bits of remaining sludge caught on some rocks and stops to take samples. The rest just sinks into the floor.
RHU
I could try to bring Hazz' in on this, but...
Rhu makes a Hazz'-isn't-exactly-reliable gesture.
HAZZ'RIDAN
(such that only Rhu can hear him)
YOU LOST HER. YOU LOST THEM ALL.
Rhu brushes the voice aside.
RADEK
(holding up a vial of the sludge)
I don't know how this works and I don't know how she works.
...But I am certainly going to try and find out.
He then goes to more properly examine the body. (rolled 12 medicine) She just looks dead. Perfectly normal, but not moving, and yet all the wounds from the fight are gone. It doesn't make sense.
RADEK
I need a damned defibrillator, here. She's dead.
Greibel, meanwhile, is holding his bong, but now it's wrong. Changed colour. Turned black and gleaming. He walks up to the pool of water to try to shake out his bong, but this doesn't help, so he rinses it with the funky water in a bit of a panic.
Behind him, the dead Amadi burbles up some funky water.
The Gravedigger holds Amadi upside down and gives her a good vigorous shaking to get out the water.
This doesn't help either. The Gravedigger gets out the water, but the bong... the bong is still just plain wrong.
