The West Guestroom, The Monastery of Stilled Nightmares, Sebua
July 17th, 761, 1:19 AM; Day 122 of the Menetnashte Expedition
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A flurry of magic and bullets cascaded against the greater Dreamspawn's charcoal scales, even as the demonic-looking beast raised its wings to protect itself against the electricity splashing against it. Bullets tore through the membranes of its wings, and black blood oozed from multiple wounds.
It raised a head from the protective grasp of its wings, and you began to feel a headache forming in your head, an unpleasant droning whisper at the very back of consciousness, not yet bad, but just on the verge of becoming painful, unbearably so.
DocBeard wrote:Not, Tomas thinks as his head is cracked on the floor, my best plan. And then he sees what that...thing did to his friend! "Dieter!" Tomas exclaims, kicking up from the ground and rushing over to his fallen friend. Kneeling down, Tomas grabs the Lamordian's chest, shaking him a little in an attempt to shock his countryman out of unconsciousness! "Now is not the time-come on, get up!"
"Ugh..." Dieter opened one eye groggily, wincing as he did so. The young Lamordian's eyes were bloodshot, and Tomas noticed that he looked as though he had just a headache that was to a migraine what the God-Storm was to a tiny dust-devil. "What
happened?"
YalenusVeler wrote:Fortunately, or not, Andre had sacrificed his humanity on the altar of power a few stops back, and only due to its passing were his words even possible. Onieran"Stop breaking my toys. Have you any idea how long its taken to encourage the paranoia and self doubt amongst them? The petty rivalries grown to bonfire intensity, the questions with no comfortable answer that everyone feels must be asked? Slay one of them now, and it's like drinking wine before it's aged, an abject waste!"
Oneiran is not a language built for human throats. It is like the hissing of a snake, or the cold rasp of rough cloth being rubbed together. It is most
assuredly not something that the normal human vocal apparatus can replicate, even in the depths of extremity. To put it bluntly, humans can't speak Oneiran any more than they can speak Dog or Cat.
Of course, Andre wasn't particularly human these days, so the rough, hissing rasp that erupted from his throat wasn't
too surprising, although you could tell even from a layman's perspective that it was a much cruder form of the subtle tongue of the Dreamspawn. For one thing, it didn't make your skin crawl (as much). Still, there was something most emphatically
wrong about a mortal man hissing like an overheated tea kettle.
The Ennui blinked, and the painful buzz stopped dead. It wasn't really a blink in so far as most people would imagine it, rather the flicking of a translucent nictating membrane horizontally across the two crimzon eyes, dimming them momentarily to the glow of low-burning charcoal. Ignoring the rest of you, and its not inconsiderable wounds, the creature took flight, spreading its vast wings and half-gliding, half-jumping to the ground in front of Andre.
It was magnificent, really, in a rather ominous fashion as it stood to full height maybe ten feet from where Andre stood. How it knew where that was, seeing as he was still invisible, was a question best left unanswered. Standing fully twelve feet tall at the shoulder, the Greater Dreamspawn was at once very human in form, but also utterly
inhuman. It's physique was slender, wiry, despite its great size, and though nothing about it definitely labeled it as male or female, it seemed more of a masculine creature. Actually, if you ignored the dog-like head, the wings, the extra arms, and the lashing, whip-like tail, it sort of looked like Charles.
The Ennui folded its wings around itself, turning them into a kind of leathery cloak, and gazed rather disconcertingly at Andre for about a moment before speaking.
Shshahashsh Alshsh-ash-rhassh was roughly what it sounded like, though there were subtle, unnerving graduations that made the sound of Oneiran like a feathery touch over your skin. The creature spoked a few short lines, before shakings its half-canine, half-serpentine head, a gesture of confusion or annoyance, you couldn't tell. Several more short, headache-inducing phrases followed.
Well, at least it wasn't trying to kill you now. That was an improvement... right?
Go Team Venture!
